Awarded the 2019 Achievement in Digital Health Award by Seattle Business Magazine and Presents Awards to Top Performing Medical Groups.
SEATTLE — The Washington Health Alliance and Milliman MedInsight were recognized for Achievement in Digital Health by Seattle Business magazine at its 2019 Leaders in Health Care Awards ceremony. Recognized as among “Washington’s most accomplished health care innovators,” Seattle Business magazine Editor in Chief Rob Smith said, “these extraordinary professionals are literally transforming health care as we know it.”
Using results from the “health waste calculator,” a new tool developed by Milliman MedInsight, the Alliance published First, Do No Harm, a report looking at health care waste in Washington state. Using 48 measures identified as being overused by the national Choosing Wisely initiative, the Alliance analyzed data from more than 4 million patients with both commercial and Medicaid insurance for one year (July 2016 to June 2017) and found:
- more than 2 million patients received one or more of 2.9 million services;
- more than 1 million patients (50.1%) received low-value services;
- 1,383,720 of these services (47.2%) were considered low-value, at an estimated cost of $341
- million; and
- 10 treatment areas accounted for 88% of the waste.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Alliance Deputy Director Susie Dade. “Low-value health care has the potential to cause harm to patients. Certainly, patients are at risk for physical or emotional harm. But we can’t overlook the potential for financial harm too. When we deliver unnecessary tests, treatments and procedures to patients and then send them a big bill, we are harming them. The bottom line is that we can’t achieve high value health care without eliminating low-value health care.”
In addition to receiving the Achievement in Digital Health award, the Alliance gave awards of its own.
Each year, the Alliance publishes the Community Checkup report, comparing health care delivery performance to national standards and then ranking medical groups based on their performance.
Executive Director Nancy Giunto recognized the providers who consistently placed in the top five for the last five years.
• The Everett Clinic
• Kaiser Permanente Medical Group
• Swedish Medical Group
• Virginia Mason Medical Group
• UW Medicine – Valley Medical Group
Giunto said, “these organizations have made a longstanding commitment to quality that shows. It shows in the care they provide and in the people that they treat. It shows year after year, that they are committed to consistently delivering high quality care. And that is why we are here, to ensure people in Washington state are receiving quality health care.”
Date: March 5, 2019