Alliance Blog

This month, we’re excited to welcome The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) as the newest members of the Alliance. About The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) IHME is an independent population health research center at UW Medicine, part of the University of Washington, that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world’s ...

New site breaks new ground in the ways it allows visitors to use data to promote transparency and value-based purchasing  SEATTLE, February 22, 2017 –The Washington Health Alliance (the Alliance) today announced the launch of its new Community Checkup website, its signature site with detailed results on the quality of care  and patient experience within ...

Variation in health care is a common theme in the Alliance’s work. The Community Checkup report released last December highlights how this variation is found across geographies and among medical groups, clinics and hospitals. Now a new report that the Alliance is preparing to release next week illustrates that disparities in care are a significant ...

The new year has just begun, but the Alliance is already off to a busy start. Earlier this week, the Alliance and The Bree Collaborative issued a call to action, inviting health care leaders across the state to join a coordinated response to Washington state’s opioid addiction crisis. The impetus for this call to action ...

Opioid addiction is driving the drug overdoses which are claiming too many lives in the US. In 2015 alone, 718 people in Washington state died from opioid-related overdoses. The epidemic is growing quickly, devastating Washington families and communities. There are many factors driving this crisis and nobody can solve it alone. Together the Washington Health ...

This week, the Alliance released its tenth version of the Community Checkup report, along with the second set of results for the Washington State Common Measure Set for Health Care Quality and Cost. In the report you will find that unwarranted variation continues to be a problem in our state. This pattern of significant variation ...

High-value health care: that’s the goal, for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our community. No one knowingly chooses low value, not for something as important as health care. We all want health care that offers the best possible outcomes, with confidence that no matter where we go for care that we’ll reliably experience high ...

Governor Inslee announced this morning his office’s plan to address the opioid use public health crisis by coordinating multi-sector efforts through executive order. We applaud the Governor for his strong leadership on addressing the opioid crisis. And we are honored to have been named a partner in action for this important initiative. One of the ...

The number of people enrolled in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) through their employer is growing. Almost 90 percent of enrollees in Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces are in a plan with a deductible above the amount that qualifies a plan as an HDHP. And as our past Community Checkup reports have shown, there continues ...

This month, we’re excited to welcome Bayer as the newest member of the Alliance. About Bayer Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the Life Science fields of health care and agriculture. Its products and services are designed to benefit people and improve their quality of life. At the same time, the Group ...

Governor Inslee announced yesterday morning that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has awarded Washington State $1.5 billion for Medicaid transformation as part of the governor’s Healthier Washington initiative. We applaud the hard work and negotiations our colleagues at the State engaged in to reach an agreement in-principle with CMS. The 1115 Medicaid Waiver ...

Governor Inslee announced this morning that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has awarded Washington State $1.5 billion for Medicaid transformation as part of the governor’s Healthier Washington initiative. We applaud the hard work and negotiations our colleagues at the State engaged in to reach an agreement in-principle with CMS. The 1115 Medicaid ...