Alliance Blog

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 ...

This month, we’re excited to welcome IBM Watson Health and Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as the newest member of the Alliance.   About IBM Watson Health Using advanced technology IBM Watson Health enables professionals to share health data and deliver insight to further care through hospitals, providers, insurers, researchers and patients. We have set an ambitious ...

At the Alliance’s Board of Directors retreat last week, we talked a lot about how we define and measure the impact of the Alliance’s work. We know very well that you can’t improve what you don’t measure and we are not immune from the magnifying glass we use to evaluate the health care system. The ...

WHA Senate Letter N. Giunto FINAL

I am delighted to report that the legislation to move us closer to a single statewide All-Payer Claims Database (APCD) has successfully moved through both houses of the Washington legislature. It passed the House 91 to 5 on April 16th and passed the Senate 44 to 1 on April 26th. It is currently awaiting Governor ...