Health Affairs article highlights Alliance equity efforts
An article published in Health Affairs Forefront Friday, coauthored by Executive Director Drew Oliveira and Director of Data Management and Analytics Mark Pregler, highlights the Alliance’s new efforts to shine a light on equity in the quality of care in Washington state.
The article, titled: “Improving Quality And Equity Through Neighborhood-Level Measures Of Social Need,” highlights how where someone lives can directly impact the quality of care they receive in primary care settings.
This report draws information from the Alliance’s 2023 Community Checkup, which paired the quality data from the All-Payer Claim Database, representing 4.5 million Washingtonians, with the Neighborhood Atlas (Area Deprivation Index). The Neighborhood Atlas, a tool validated by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, measures the relative socioeconomic advantage or disadvantage of an area down to the neighborhood level.
The article was written along with Anna M. Morenz, MD, a board-certified internal medicine physician and practicing primary care internist at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, and Josh Liao, MD, the medical director of payment strategy at the University of Washington (UW) Medicine.
To learn more about the Community Checkup, and our work pairing total cost of care and quality with the Neighborhood Atlas, please visit www.wacommunitycheckup.org.