First convened in December 2004 as a disparate group of experts intending to design a new payment model, PROMETHEUS Payment® Inc., was awarded a $6.4 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to develop a scorecard, refine the concepts and most importantly test the program in four pilot sites across the country. Having modeled its first Evidence-informed Case Rates™ for actual implementation beginning in 2009, the results are quite stunning. In her plain language article, “Making PROMETHEUS Payment® Rates Real: Ya’Gotta’ Start Somewhere” Alice explains the methodology of constructing the rates. First, she elucidates how the Design Team took into account its clear understanding that physicians would be suspicious of rates built on claims data. There are five specific financial cushions built into the rates. The result is that the care for a controlled non-insulin dependent diabetic, whose care comes primarily from a physician office, would be paid based just on the claims data at $311 a year; but, under the PROMETHEUS system, the same patient’s care would be eligible for $2329 to the physician!!! At the same time, what is most remarkable, is that this approach to the broad problem of delivering science based diabetes care would save the system represented in just the database we are using and this one condition, more than $340 million. This is a very powerful reason to move to the PROMETHEUS Payment® model. Similar results are emerging for the other conditions we will address initially as well. The more important hidden message in the article, though, is whether our specific program is implemented is not the issue. Throughout the American healthcare system, we are spending extraordinary amounts of money on potentially avoidable complications, while we are not paying providers enough to do what needs to be done to prevent those complications in the first place. Exploring which services the PROMETHEUS model considers to be potentially avoidable, and then analyzing how to avoid them, is a good way to think about how to organize clinical service delivery for better results with greater efficiency.