The money will be used to lift the overall quality of healthcare, reduce racial and ethnic disparities and provide models for national reform, the foundation said Thursday.

"Across America, there are serious gaps between the healthcare that people should receive and the care they actually receive," Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a statement. "Despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world, patients are subject to too many mistakes, too much miscommunication and too much inequity."

A report released by the foundation said researchers at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice found black patients lost legs to amputations at a rate nearly five times that of whites and one in three women insured by Medicare are not getting recommended mammograms.

The program Aligning Forces for Quality will concentrate its resources in parts of Ohio, Michigan, California, Missouri, Maine, Tennessee, Minnesota, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon and Wisconsin.