Alliance Blog

I am delighted to share some exciting Alliance news. As a way to support not just reporting on the health care system, but propelling action to improve it, the Alliance’s Board of Directors has committed to an initiative to reduce opioid prescribing in our state, focusing on appropriate use of opioid prescriptions for low-back pain ...

This month, we’re excited to welcome Health Management Associates as the newest member of the Alliance. About Health Management Associates Health Management Associates (HMA) is a leading independent national research and consulting firm in the healthcare industry. Founded in 1985, today they are more than 200 consultants strong and still growing. Their team comes from ...

I’m proud to say that 2019 brought the Alliance several firsts-in-the-nation and in our state. We: reported on the wide variation of actual prices for inpatient treatment (including facility and physician charges) not only across Washington, but within individual hospitals; revealed the underlying reasons why there was a decline in inpatient spending with our statewide ...

Hospital costs is a big topic these days. It’s not surprising when one-third of our health care dollars go to care in hospitals. And on the consumer side, medical bills are getting national attention. Just look at NPR and Kaiser Health News’ Bill of the Month series, Vox’s reporting on ER bills, and hospital collection ...

We’ve gotten a lot of attention from our latest report released last week, using the Milliman MedInsight Health Waste Calculator™ (Calculator) to look at waste in terms of the 47 tests, procedures, and treatments commonly recognized as overused by the Choosing Wisely® campaign and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. The response from all corners ...

This month, we’re excited to welcome Exact Sciences as the newest member of the Alliance. About Exact Sciences Exact Sciences is molecular diagnostics company focused on the early detection and prevention of colorectal cancer with its non-invasive screening product, Cologuard. Exact Sciences estimates that 3 million people have used Cologuard since it was launched, resulting ...

You know health care is top of mind when the Wall Street Journal publishes a multiple choice questionnaire about health care costs. My staff and I recently took the WSJ quiz and we did pretty well (thanks to our last All-Alliance event, we all knew how much debt medical students have), but we were surprised ...

On October 15th and 16th, Executive Director Nancy Giunto will be in Minnesota for the 3rd Annual Affordability Summit sponsored by the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement. One of the goals of the summit is to understand national and regional actions that are advancing affordability by improving health, reducing cost, and eliminating waste.  On that ...

It is fitting that our All-Alliance Meeting later this month focuses on primary care. We have long believed that primary care prevents more serious health issues down the line and is the best place to focus our resources, but with some recent findings, we have some support to back it up. The Patient-Centered Primary Care ...

This month, we’re excited to welcome Magick.ai as the newest member of the Alliance. About magick.ai Founded by award-winning AI experts in 2018, Magick AI is pioneering augmented cognition to solve human problems. Magick.ai applies the latest AI tools, techniques, and insights to extend and enhance human capability. Learn more about magick.ai here.  

You may have seen the recent Wall Street Journal article, “Posting Health Prices Online Isn’t Cure-All.” In it, the reporter takes a close look at New Hampshire’s twelve years of experience of posting prices online and concludes that there have been few benefits: prices have not significantly decreased, overall spending has been reduced only marginally, ...

It’s officially summer and I am appreciating the opportunity to spend more time in the garden with these long warm days, but it got me thinking about some recent studies on exercise. Did you know that according to a recent study by the CDC, less than 25% of adults in the US get enough physical ...