Washington Health Alliance Selected to Continue Work for National Project to Measure and Compare Healthcare Costs Across U.S. Regions
Grant allows Alliance to expand on Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement’s pioneering price transparency project
Seattle, November 28, 2017— The Washington Health Alliance (Alliance) announced today that it has been selected by the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) to continue work on NRHI’s Total Cost of Care (TCoC) project.
NRHI is a national organization of regional health improvement collaboratives working to transform the U.S. healthcare system. The TCoC project is part of NRHI’s Getting to Affordability initiative, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and seeks to answer such critical questions as: What does healthcare cost in my community? Why does healthcare cost more in some places than others? and What’s driving the differences in costs for the same services or procedures?
“We’re proud and excited that NRHI has chosen the Alliance to continue to participate in this important national effort,” said Nancy A. Giunto, executive director of the Alliance. “The project allows us to continue to build on our well-established reputation for transparency and on bringing together stakeholders to help move the market from information to action using pricing information.”
Under the new grant, the Alliance will convene stakeholders to generate reports on pricing variation and find solutions to barriers to accelerate pricing reporting. In addition, the Alliance will share its learnings on engaging data suppliers to provide pricing data on a voluntary basis.
The Alliance joins nine other organizations that have previously received funding to address regional barriers to measuring and reporting Total Cost of Care. In addition, NRHI announced that five new collaboratives will also be joining the national project.
For more information about the project, see its January 2017 report “From Claims to Clarity: Deriving Actionable Healthcare Cost Benchmarks from Aggregated Commercial Claims Data,” which provided the first-ever comparison of what commercial insurers are paying for healthcare in different regions of the country.
About Washington Health Alliance
The Washington Health Alliance is a place where stakeholders work collaboratively to transform Washington state’s health care system for the better. The Alliance brings together organizations that share a commitment to drive change in our health care system by offering a forum for critical conversation and aligned efforts by stakeholders: purchasers, providers, health plans, consumers and other health care partners. The Alliance believes strongly in transparency and offers trusted and credible reporting of progress on measures of health care quality and value. The Alliance is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit with more than 185 member organizations. A cornerstone of the Alliance’s work is the Community Checkup, a report to the public comparing the performance of medical groups, hospitals and health plans and offering a community-level view on important measures of health care quality (www.wacommunitycheckup.org).
About NRHI
NRHI represents more than 30 regional health improvement collaboratives (RHICs) and state-affiliated partners, all working toward the goals of better health, better care, and lower costs. RHICs provide a neutral, trusted mechanism through which communities can plan, facilitate, and coordinate the activities required for successful transformation of their healthcare systems. RHICs’ deep local and regional knowledge makes them uniquely qualified to help develop innovative solutions to their communities’ particular needs. Follow us on Twitter at @RegHealthImp.
About RWJF
For more than 40 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve health and health care. We are working with others to build a national Culture of Health enabling everyone in America to live longer, healthier lives. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at www.rwjf.org/facebook.
Media Contact:
John Gallagher
Washington Health Alliance
206.454.2957
jgallagher@wahealthalliance.org