Read what doctors, patients, employers, health plans and the media are saying about the Community Checkup.
"The Community Checkup is showing that across many basic medical services--like testing cholesterol, screening for colon cancer, and treating depression--some of us are not getting the care we need. This is a problem for all of us: doctors, patients, insurers and employers that buy health benefits. But by working together, as we have to create this report, we can begin to solve it."
David Fleming, M.D.,
Chair, Puget Sound Health Alliance Board of Directors
Director, Public Health - Seattle and King County
"Many physicians and other medical, health data and community experts have been actively involved in creating this report. This collaborative and open process has resulted in a Community Checkup that will be useful for all of our quality improvement efforts."
Lloyd David
CEO/Executive Director, The Polyclinic
"We have never had access to this much information before, and it will be available to everyone as we work to provide quality care while controlling costs. This is a remarkable picture of what's working, and what needs work, in our region's health care system."
King County Executive Ron Sims
"I applaud the Puget Sound Health Alliance for their work completing the first Community Checkup report. This is exactly the kind of information that patients and their doctors should have to make informed health care choices and drive a higher-quality, more affordable health care system. It is no wonder that Washington serves as a national model and is leading the way to create solutions to transform the heath care system.”
Governor Chris Gregoire
"I am pleased to congratulate the Puget Sound Health Alliance, the first HHS-designated Community Leader for Value-Driven Health Care, on its continued leadership in working to bring about high quality care and better value for the citizens of our region."
James Whitfield
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
"We agree with the Alliance's goal of helping the whole community -including patients and employers - promote effective health care, support quality improvement and become more informed health care purchasers. The Community Checkup Report complements the WSMA's Education and Research Foundation's quality improvement program (Quip) available privately to individual physicians, which draws from the same evidence based guidelines for certain conditions."
Brian Wicks, MD
President, Washington State Medical Association
"The regular reports of clinical performance to our community is an important first step in the consistent delivery of quality health care. This important information will be used to systematically improve care for our region and will demonstrate that these collaborative efforts can result in better care at lower costs for everyone."
Hugh Straley, M.D.
Group Health Permanente
Medical Director, Group Health Cooperative
"Preparing the Puget Sound Health Alliance Community Checkup was a monumental undertaking. The level of data compiling and reconciling around ambulatory performance measures was unprecedented. As with any data gathering effort, it required careful analysis and many reviews to make sure the information was complete and thorough. Our team at Virginia Mason is impressed with the commitment of the Alliance staff. We look forward to working together to refine and expand the report, which will further strengthen our quality improvement efforts and benefit our patients."
David F. Dreis, M.D.
Medical Director, Clinical Outcomes, Virginia Mason Medical Center
"This report represents a quantum leap in outpatient reporting. We at MultiCare Health System applaud the diligence with which the Alliance has approached the data analysis and the willingness of the Alliance to refine its analytical methods. We look forward to an ongoing partnership in order to continue to develop the methodology so our communities can have the most accurate data available on their health care. More importantly, this information will lead health care consumers to become more involved in their own health care and more informed about the choices they make regarding their health and their health care. We at MultiCare are committed to quality patient care."
Smokey Stover, M.D.
Vice President, MultiCare Health System
"Publication of the region's first 'Community Checkup' represents the first in a long series of changes intended to bring consumers and purchasers of health care services into a sphere of influence for health systems change never before allowed by the industry. The community checkup will help to illustrate in a common language that there are very serious problems with the way we finance and deliver medical care in this country. Variable performance on measures of good care across provider groups in an area as small as central Puget Sound is largely a symptom of system chaos and perverse incentives which influence the way in which patients receive care. The community checkup is a milestone for helping to move hidden issues blocking substantive health care reform into the light of day."
Rick MacCornack, PhD
Director of Quality Improvement, Northwest Physicians Network
"It's exciting to be a participant in the collaborative 'Community Checkup'. The dynamic of purchasers, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, consumers, and health plans working together to improve our community's healthcare is worthy of all our support. As a community, we have a tremendous opportunity to collectively promote evidence-based care while enhancing the overall healthcare experience."
Ze'ev Young, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer & Vice President, First Choice Health
"Tools like this create a common set of quality benchmarks for large health care purchasers like the State of Washington and Boeing. This has a ripple effect as our contracting providers follow these criteria, and adopt them as a way of doing their business. In turn, their quality practices spread throughout the industry."
Steve Hill
Administrator, Washington State Health Care Authority
"Boeing is pleased to be part of such a positive collaborative effort of purchasers, payers, providers and consumers of health care in the development of the Community Checkup. The release of this report is a giant step toward transparency of health care information and providing employees with quantitative data to make more informed health care decisions."
Greg Marchand
HR Business Development, The Boeing Company
"This report is the first step in getting important information into the hands of everyday people. We need to encourage everyone to talk to their doctors and to speak up about their care. With the information in this report, patients now have a tool to talk with doctors to make sure they are getting the care that has been proven to be most effective."
Larry Brown
Legislative Director, Aerospace Machinists 751, International Association of Machinists (IAM)
"Everyone in the Puget Sound region deserves top-tier health care, and this report is a great first step in improving the quality of care across the board. UFCW's involvement with the Puget Sound Health Alliance has already helped us as we created new benefits designed to help the participants in our Taft- Hartley trust live healthier lives, prevent illness and make informed decisions about their healthcare. By working together as a community and sharing information and insights, we can make sure that everyone has the information they need to take become an active participant in their care."
Diane Zahn
Secretary/Treasurer, United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 21
"We believe providing cost and quality information to health care consumers is critical in transforming health care. That is why we create tools at Regence to empower and reward members for being active participants in their care. Regence applauds the Alliance's work to provide the public with clear information about the degree to which evidence- based medical guidelines are followed. We have decided to use the quality reports from the Alliance, rather than relying on our own analyses."
Mary McWilliams
President, Regence BlueShield
"By combining the guidance of Puget Sound area physicians with data and efforts of multiple health plans and employers, the Alliance's Community Checkup report has the potential to promote further gains in regional healthcare quality."
Audrey Halvorson
Chief Actuary, Premera Blue Cross & Alliance Board member
"Businesses are increasingly interested in efforts to make our health care system more transparent. And that's just what the Puget Sound Health Alliance, with it's unprecedented access to data, is doing. The Community Checkup and public reports like it are the key to creating a value-driven health care system, one that brings needed information to consumers."
Steve Mullin
CEO, Business Roundtable
"The Puget Sound Community Checkup released today by the Puget Sound Health Alliance marks an important step forward in improving health care in the Seattle Region.
Measuring and publicly reporting on the performance of clinics and their doctors is critical to the drive to lift the quality of care for everyone. This information helps both doctors and their patients do a better job. It helps doctors know where they can improve their performance. And it helps patients better understand that even in high-quality communities such as Seattle, there are differences in the available care and they need to take a greater role in their own health care, from the way they select their providers to the way they manage their chronic conditions.
Seattle is one of 14 communities the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation chose last year for its Aligning Forces for Quality initiative, which works with broad- based teams in each individual community to improve the quality of the care for patients with chronic conditions. I thank the Puget Sound Health Alliance for its continued national leadership on health care improvement and for the careful way it has worked to build consensus within Seattle for health improvement. We are all better for it."
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D. President & CEO, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Seattle Times (editorial), February 6, 2008
A Path to Better Health
While state and federal elected officials are planning major surgery on the nation's health-care system, a local group is starting with a shrewder approach: taking the patient's temperature. The Puget Sound Health Alliance last week released "Community Checkup," its first report on the effectiveness of the health care people are getting compared to the best, most cost-efficient practices. Read more
King County Television, February 2, 2008
Community Checkup Media Briefing
View streaming video of the unveiling of the first Community Checkup report at the Puget Sound Health Alliance media briefing on January 31, 2008.
The Puget Sound Business Journal, February 1, 2008
Alliance: We have work to do on patients' care
New data produced by the Puget Sound Health Alliance about how well doctors in the Puget Sound region care for patients give everyone a tool to improve health care - and thereby hold down surging medical costs, which have been hammering employers and governments alike. Read more
The Associated Press, February 1, 2008
Report: Puget Sound WA Patients Missing Preventative Checkups
A report released today says about 20 percent of heart disease or diabetes patients in the Puget Sound did not have their cholesterol checked at least once a year. The Seattle-based Puget Sound Health Alliance produced the report. Read more
The Tacoma News Tribune, February 1, 2008
Report Card Grades Region’s Health Care Clinics
About three years ago, Puget Sound-area business and government leaders came together to figure out ways to save on health insurance by keeping their employees healthy. With the help of the medical community, they formed a group called the Puget Sound Health Alliance, and started crunching data from employees’ health insurance claims – which record what kind of care they get – to determine where improvements could be made. The goal was to see how often patients got the treatments that experts at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere said they should receive to stay as healthy as possible. The group’s first annual report card came out Thursday. It analyzed outpatient claims data for 1.6 million people in Pierce, Thurston, King, Kitsap and Snohomish counties, and concluded that there’s room for improvement. Read more
The Olympian, February 1, 2008
Report Points Out Ways Health Care Can Improve
Up to one-fifth of patients in the Puget Sound area who need regular cholesterol screenings for diabetes or heart disease are falling through the cracks, a new report says. "Some of us are not getting the care we need," said Dr. David Fleming, chairman of the board of the private, nonprofit Puget Sound Health Alliance, which produced the study. The report was designed to identify gaps in the region's health care system and to suggest where improvements need to be made. Read more
The Seattle Times, February 1, 2008
First Check-Up for Area's Clinics
After years of work, lots of fanfare and a plentiful dose of disagreement, a collaboration by employers, health insurers, unions and medical providers around Puget Sound has produced a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive comparison of the medical care performed at 14 different clinic systems in the Puget Sound area. Read more
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 1, 2008
Local Health Care 'Checkup' Finds Room For Improvement: Survey looked at patients, clinics in 5 counties
In an effort to identify areas in local health care that need improving, the Puget Sound Health Alliance conducted a "community checkup" of 1.6 million patients, finding that many measures were below standard. Results of that checkup were released Thursday, with alliance members calling the findings a baseline to begin changing care for the better. Read more
