Mission & Guiding Principles

Aligning Forces for Quality

Quality Improvement Strategy

Board of Directors

History

Staff

Employment & Volunteer Opportunities

Donations & Collaboration

1. Forge a local alliance among community members, with focus on the key groups that impact the quality and cost of health care in our region:

• Purchasers of care, particularly those that are self-insured
• Providers of care, including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, natural medicine, hospitals, and other allied health professionals
• Insurers of care, including health plans that serve as third party administrators for self-insured purchasers
  
  

2. Develop the infrastructure and processes necessary to achieve and sustain improvements in the quality of health care:

• Uniform standards for clinical quality
• Objective, ongoing measurement of results
• Sharing of data through systems in the public domain
• Collaborative learning efforts that support delivery of evidence-based, high quality care
  
  

3. Align purchaser, provider, health plan and patient or consumer incentives to support increased quality and decreased costs:

• Redesign employee benefit packages to support consumer choice of high quality providers, compliance with chronic disease regimens, and participation in health promotion activities
• Redesign provider contracting approaches to encourage physicians and other health care professionals to participate in Alliance quality improvement initiatives, including provision of data regarding care, support for publication of data in the public domain, and compliance with evidence-based protocols
• Redesign health benefit plan approaches to support participation of high quality providers, provision of plan data for quality improvement measurement, and publication of that quality comparison data to the public
  
  

4. Design and provide services that support improvement in the quality and affordability of health care:

• Provide training for health care professionals with evidence-based protocols to enable them to deliver top quality care
• Assist physicians and other providers in the addition of state of the art technology that will enable them to more effectively manage their patients’ care, e.g., computer systems, office design methods, patient flow and scheduling approaches, and other proven approaches to increasing provider efficiency and quality
• Teach patients and other consumers how to follow evidence-based guidelines for patients that will enable them to manage their own diseases and prevent the escalation of health problems into more serious and expensive conditions
• Provide employers with technical assistance, health promotion packages, and proven programs that promote employee health