Alliance Blog

Gov. Jay Inslee has announced the appointment of Lou McDermott as interim director of the Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA), replacing Dorothy Frost Teeter. The Alliance congratulates McDermott on his appointment and looks forward to a continued close partnership with the HCA. Healthier Washington, an initiative of the HCA, shares many of the same ...

The Washington Health Alliance’s All-Alliance meeting on June 20 brought together representatives from leading health care purchasers, providers, and plans from across the state for informative and thought-provoking presentations and discussion. Members heard about upcoming reports from the Alliance, got an overview of the Practice Transformation Hub from Selena Bolotin of Qualis Health, and learned ...

On Monday, June 26, Dr. Emily Transue of the Washington State Health Care Authority represented Healthier Washington and the Alliance on New Day Northwest for a segment on ensuring quality health care. Dr. Transue highlighted the Own Your Health website and the many resources it makes available to consumers. Video of the segment is available ...

At the Alliance, we define high-value health care as high quality and good patient experience at a fair price. Over the past eleven years, and with the help and support of our valued members, the Alliance has developed a well-established reputation for public reporting of objective, trustworthy quality and patient experience results. Building upon this ...

The Alliance’s Director of Communication and Development, John Gallagher, recently hosted a webinar demonstrating some of the many features of the Community Checkup website. Topics covered include how to compare scores, view scores by topic, how to interpret the results, and much more. The Community Checkup is a resource for unbiased, trustworthy data and analysis ...

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made headlines for finding that more than 20 percent of adults in the U.S. are infected with cancer-causing human papillomavirus (HPV). And with an HPV-associated cancer rate of 11.29 per 100,000 people, Washington has the highest rate of any state in the WWAMI ...

For five years, The Leapfrog Group – a national nonprofit organization comprised of large private and public healthcare purchasers – has issued the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, reporting on errors, accidents and infections in hospitals across the U.S. Last week, they released their spring 2017 report, which includes grades of 46 hospitals in Washington state. ...

Today we celebrate Choosing Wisely’s 5th anniversary! The Alliance is proud to be a grantee of this exciting and important campaign and to play a part in helping to advance its goals in Washington state. Choosing Wisely® is a national initiative of the ABIM Foundation, in partnership with Consumer Reports, that is helping physicians and ...

Opioid addiction is driving the drug overdoses which are claiming too many lives in the US. In 2015 alone, 718 people in Washington state died from opioid-related overdoses. The epidemic is growing quickly, devastating Washington families and communities. There are many factors driving this crisis and nobody can solve it alone. Together the Washington Health ...

This week, the Alliance released its tenth version of the Community Checkup report, along with the second set of results for the Washington State Common Measure Set for Health Care Quality and Cost. In the report you will find that unwarranted variation continues to be a problem in our state. This pattern of significant variation ...

High-value health care: that’s the goal, for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our community. No one knowingly chooses low value, not for something as important as health care. We all want health care that offers the best possible outcomes, with confidence that no matter where we go for care that we’ll reliably experience high ...

Governor Inslee announced this morning his office’s plan to address the opioid use public health crisis by coordinating multi-sector efforts through executive order. We applaud the Governor for his strong leadership on addressing the opioid crisis. And we are honored to have been named a partner in action for this important initiative. One of the ...