Alliance Blog

Panelists Dr. Kavita Chawla, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health; Dr. Brett Daniel, Optum Health; and Dave Schoolcraft, Ogden Murphy Wallace, with moderator Denise Giambalvo, Executive Director, Washington Health Alliance.Photo by Kanan Gole AI is already in the exam room, the billing office, and the patient’s inbox. For the people who pay for health care, the real ...

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. employers plan to build AI into their health and benefits programs within two years, according to a 2026 WTW survey summarized by WorldatWork. That changes how employees find care, how plans administer benefits, and who reviews a denial. Here is what the Washington health care community should be asking about now. ...

Washington Health Alliance purchaser members joined 408 employers nationwide in the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions’ 2026 Pulse of the Purchaser survey. The clearest finding this year: employers with full access to medical and pharmacy claims data used more high-value purchasing strategies on average than those without it. Prescription drugs sit at the center ...

Looking back at our February Pharmacy Benefits forum, we know it’s crucial to keep the momentum up. WHA is going deeper on PBM contracting and negotiation through 2027. A Washington public employer found $2.7 million her plan had overpaid on generic drugs, about 39% too much on roughly $6 million of generic spend. Nothing had ...

At this year’s spring forum, the conversation kept circling back to the same place. Workforce health strategy, whole-person care, data infrastructure, AI. Every thread led back to one question: do your employees have a real relationship with a primary care physician? For most workforces, the answer is not consistently yes. And the cost of that ...

The WHA May Forum, “Beyond the Bottom Line: Strategies for High-Value, Affordable Care,” brought together employers, health plans, physicians and health systems, and data experts for a full day of honest conversation about what is and is not working in Washington’s healthcare system. Throughout panels and keynote presentations, the issues facing employers took center stage. ...

AI came up in nearly every session at the WHA May Forum. Not as a distant possibility, but as something already reshaping how care gets delivered, how data gets used, and how employers should think about the system they’re buying into. Here’s what the forum revealed. The WHA May Forum, “Beyond the Bottom Line: Strategies ...

The employers making the most progress on health care costs are not cutting benefits. They are redesigning them. Over the past two months, we have made the case that Washington’s affordability crisis demands an upstream response, and that value means quality and cost together, not one at the expense of the other. The common thread ...