While we did take a few minutes to watch the eclipse last month, there was no summer lull for us at the Alliance. We released our first Hospital Value Report, welcomed three new members (Columbia Valley Community Health, Spark Therapeutics, and Trutina Financial), presented on our opioids work at a national conference, and recruited a stellar panel for our upcoming All-Alliance meeting.

In addition, I am pleased to announce that the Alliance has received a scholarship through the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement’s Getting to Affordability initiative, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for registration and travel to the National Affordability Summit in Washington, D.C. on September 27th.

The Alliance’s Deputy Director, Susie Dade, and I will be traveling to the conference with an influential delegation, many of whom are Board members of the Alliance:

• Joe Babani, Manager, Compensation and Benefits Technology Strategy, The Boeing Company
• Sarah Greene, Executive Director, Health Care Systems Research Network
• Fred Jarrett, Deputy King County Executive
• Christopher Kodama, MD, President, MultiCare Connected Care, LLC
• Paul Sherman, MD, COO and Medical Director, Care Delivery, Kaiser Permanente Washington

The summit brings together leaders from other multi-stakeholder collaboratives, national speakers, elected officials and legislative staff to discuss, “Why does health care cost so much and what can we do about it?” The goals of the summit are to:

• Gain a deeper understanding of what’s driving healthcare costs and the various levers to create the will for the necessary changes in all sectors.
• Hear ideas for innovation and the role participants can play in bringing them to reality.
• Focus on how to leverage healthcare cost information regionally and nationally to enable key stakeholders to take action to achieve affordable healthcare.

The Alliance has also extended invitations to select members of the Washington legislative delegation and members of their staffs to join us for this conference.

We look forward to sharing, interacting, and learning from other transformation leaders, and hope to translate what we learn into strategic actions to continue to propel the Alliance forward. As always, thank you for your support and we look forward to reporting back after the meeting.