“The Alliance has been an incredible advocate for quality and value in healthcare and has taken on very impressive projects to increase transparency and arm our patients, employers and health care providers across our state with information that they can use to provide patients care. Your work shows exactly why transparency is such an important tool for patients, providers and governments who are looking to lower health care costs and increase value, efficiency and quality.” –Senator Patty Murray

These were the words of Senator Patty Murray during her opening statement before the Senate’s Health; Education; Labor; and Pension committee hearing yesterday where the Alliance’s ED Nancy Giunto was one of four healthcare experts invited to testify on “Reducing Health Care Costs: Examining How Transparency Can Lower Spending and Empower Patients.”

Sen. Murray highly praised the work of the Washington Health Alliance including “First Do No Harm” saying that the report’s findings that “$282 million is spent in unnecessary health care” in Washington state are consistent with the testimony their committee has been hearing recently from health care experts across the country.

The Alliance is pleased that the senate and other leaders are paying attention to this topic, and that our work is being recognized. Our portion of the testimony concluded with a number of recommendations on how the government can support efforts to reduce health care costs and empower patients to make better choices by using transparency tools such as Community Checkup.

A link to the HELP Committee hearing can be found here.

And you can read Nancy’s written testimony here.

Additionally, we received coverage from a number of national health care media outlets including: Modern HealthCare, Medpagetoday, Health Data Management, and Bloomberg Law.