Even as Congress battles over how to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, a little-known Rhode Island coalition is moving ahead with its own home-grown reform plan for this state.

The group, called HealthRIght, got a significant boost recently with a $50,000 grant from the Rhode Island Foundation, which will enable it to move forward drafting proposed legislation.

What’s the point of state-based health-care reform when the Congress is already acting on it?

The answer, says Dr. Nick Tsiongas, who is spearheading the effort, is that HealthRIght’s proposal can build on any national changes — and possibly achieve in Rhode Island what’s politically impossible in Washington.

Tsiongas, a former legislator and past president of the Rhode Island Medical Society, started quietly working on HealthRIght three years ago, long before any national plan was on the horizon. He brought together a group of people from business, unions, and health professions to ask the question — if we could remake the state’s health-care system from scratch, what would we do?

The group arrived at three core principles for how the system should work:

•All public and private money that pays for health care would flow into a single “hub” from which people would buy health coverage, selecting among all the insurers operating in the state. A similar health insurance “exchange” for the uninsured appears in the federal bills. But the HealthRIght proposal takes it one radical step further — the hub would serve all Rhode Islanders, not just the uninsured.

•This “hub” would control costs by coordinating health planning — such decisions as what services each hospital should offer –– and changing the reimbursement policies so that providers will no longer get paid based on quantity of tests and procedures.

•All Rhode Islanders would have timely access to appropriate, affordable, quality health care.

Since then, HealthRIght’s proponents have been rounding up supporters who agree with those principles and looking for money. A diverse group has signed on, including Rick Brooks of United Nurses and Allied Professionals (a union), Jerry Meyer of the East Greenwich Chamber of Commerce, Louis R. Giancola, president of South County Hospital, and Dawn Wardyga of the Rhode Island Parent Information Network.

Over the years financial support has come from Working Rhode Island (an AFL-CIO group), the Rhode Island Medical Society, the Claflin Company, Delta Dental and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, among others. A year ago, HealthRIght hired a full-time staff person, Amy Black.

Now, the Rhode Island Foundation grant will enable HealthRIght to convene several “stakeholder groups” — labor, small business, municipal employees, insurers, hospitals, medical professionals — to toss around ideas about legislation that will be filed in the next General Assembly session. “We want to see what the deal-breakers are, to see what people might be willing to give up for what they might be able to gain,” Tsiongas said.

Tsiongas says HealthRIght is aiming for the bill to pass in three years. “We don’t think for a moment that this is going to fly with this [governor’s] administration,” Tsiongas said. “We’re looking for the second year of the next administration.”

ffreyer@projo.com

Correction: A previous version of this report gave incorrect information about one of the principles of HealthRIght, a coalition developing a Rhode Island-only health care reform plan. The second principle calls for changing the reimbursement policies so that providers will no longer get paid based on quantity of tests and procedures.