The Alliance Welcomes New Members: Lucid Living, LLC and University of Washington Master of Health Administration Program
November 25, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
This month, we’re excited to welcome Lucid Living and University of Washington Master of Health Administration as the newest members of the Alliance. Lucid Living, LLC Before individuals with psychiatric... Read more »Alliance Resources Help Consumers Make Good Health Care Decisions
November 2, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
Results from our recent member survey indicate that many of you are unfamiliar with the Alliance’s Own Your Health website (OYH), which offers consumer-friendly guidance to help people make well-informed... Read more »The Alliance Welcomes New Member Unify Consulting
October 27, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
This month, we’re excited to welcome Unify Consulting as the newest member of the Alliance. Unify Consulting Optimistic Experts without Arrogance Their strategy is culture. Unify Consulting has shed the... Read more »Using Data to Drive Value
August 31, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
You often hear me talk about driving our work to action and I’m delighted to share some exciting news on a project that will do just that. The Alliance has been awarded a $350,000 grant by Arnold Ventures to work with self-funded purchasers to improve the value of care delivered across Washington state. Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy dedicated to improving lives by investing in evidence-based solutions is focused on four areas, criminal justice, education, finance, and health. It has funded more than a thousand projects since 2010, supporting “efforts to understand problems and identify policy solutions.”
This grant will enable the Alliance to assess the value of the care received by enrollees of up to eight employers and provide targeted technical assistance to help each employer implement effective strategies to reduce low-value care and increase high-value care. The work will occur in two phases. First, we will use the Milliman MedInsight™ Health Waste Calculator to analyze claims data for each purchaser to get results that are specific to its covered population. Then, we will bring together purchasers, commercial payers, and clinical leaders to develop strategies and provide technical assistance necessary to help ensure patient and clinician incentives are aligned to support the delivery of high-value care. Interventions will be designed with the specific purchaser’s needs in mind, but we expect it will be a combination of benefit coverage and design, shared decision-making, and consumer education. The results of the case study will be published in a white paper summarizing key findings which can potentially be used by policy practitioners and healthcare experts to improve the value of care delivered and increase the efficiency of healthcare delivery across the country.
Our Director of Performance Improvement and Innovation, Karen Johnson, will be leading the effort and we are fortunate to have expert advice from Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, who conceptualized and coined the term Value-Based Insurance Design (V-BID) and currently directs the V-BID Center at the University of Michigan. Most recently, Fendrick built on the decades long work in VBID and introduced VBID-X, a cost-neutral approach that encourages the reallocation of savings derived from reductions in low-value care to support an increase in the use of high-value services. In “V-BID X: Creating A Value-Based Insurance Design Plan for The Exchange Market”, Fendrick and his colleagues described this concept stating that “By abandoning blunt cost-sharing strategies and using a more clinically nuanced approach, V-BID X plans incentivize consumers to use more of the services that improve their health and less of those that don’t.”
In our latest First, Do No Harm Report, we said that “transparency is foundational for taking action – shining a light on low-value care, unwarranted variation, and the opportunities it presents. But taking action is paramount.” I’m proud that we will have the opportunity to take action with purchaser members who are dedicated to reducing low-value care and to strategize with provider and health plan members on ways we make these changes happen together.
I look forward to reporting on our progress at driving greater health care value.
All the best,
Nancy
The Alliance Welcomes PhyPal
August 18, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
This month, we’re excited to welcome Phypal as the newest member of the Alliance. PhyPal PhyPal was founded on July 5th, 2017 with the vision of redefining the traditional patient-physician... Read more »The Alliance’s New Quality Composite Score: How Quality Reporting Can Drive Regional Improvement in Health and Health Care
August 4, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
I’m sure you agree that the measurement of health care quality is an important mechanism to help us understand how to achieve better health and health care for all Washingtonians.... Read more »Advanced Professionals Insurance and Benefit Solutions Joins the Alliance
July 31, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
This month, we’re excited to welcome Advanced Professionals Insurance and Benefit Solutions as the newest member of the Alliance. Advanced Professionals Insurance and Benefit Solutions Advanced Professionals Insurance & Benefit... Read more »Read All-Alliance Speaker, Dr. A. Mark Fendrick’s Latest Commentary Here
June 17, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
Read All-Alliance speaker, Dr. A. Mark Fendrick’s latest commentary , “Crisis Into Opportunity: Can COVID-19 Help Set a Path to Improved Health Care Efficiency?“, appearing in the September 2020 edition... Read more »Stepping Back to Look at the Big Picture
June 4, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
I am deeply saddened by the racism and violence that has left our nation reeling again, just when it seems we were finding a new sense of stability coping in... Read more »Wide Variation Reported in Washington State’s Health Care System
May 18, 2020 by Washington Health Alliance
FOR RELEASE: May 18, 2020 Contact: Leslie Bennett Phone: (206) 454-2961 Email: lbennett@wahealthalliance.org Wide Variation Reported in Washington State’s Health Care System The Washington Health Alliance releases the... Read more »