Comparison Reports

Guidelines and Recommendations

Collaboration

Clinical Guidelines for Physicians, Hospitals and Other Health Care Professionals
The Alliance is developing standard, evidence-based clinical guidelines and tools for use by physicians, hospitals, employers, health plans and other health care professionals in the region. These clinical guidelines are being reviewed and recommended by teams of expert clinicians, building on existing evidence-based quality guidelines and protocols.

Tools for Consumers and Patients
The Alliance is identifying, compiling and developing (as needed) evidence-based tools for use by patients, employees and other consumers to help with health care decision-making, including managing personal health. In addition, doctors and other health care professionals will be able to give patients these state-of-the-art, evidence-based self-management and health education informational tools to encourage everyone to become better consumers of health care.

Regional Reports on Quality, Cost and Value
In January 2008, the Alliance produced its first publicly-available report comparing health care quality performance in clinics and hospitals across the region. This report is designed to help improve decision-making for physicians, hospitals, consumers, employers, health plans and others. Use of these reports also creates aligned incentives to improve quality and increase value for our health care dollar. To download a print version of the report, click here (PDF, 5,291 KB).

To view the latest version of the Community Checkup, published in November 2008, go to www.wacommunitycheckup.org.

Data Sharing
The Alliance is developing the ability for specified data to be securely stored, retrieved, and analyzed for quality and cost performance and improvement in the region. The intent is for health plans and health care professionals to eventually contribute medical record and claims data to this shared data repository. Over time the region will have an interoperable clinical data exchange system to support the database. To facilitate the collection of clinical data useful for local and regional measurement and quality improvement, the Alliance encourages the development of patient registries and electronic medical records.

Regional Infrastructure to Support Sustained Quality Improvement
The Alliance is well on its way to creating a regional infrastructure to support quality improvement in health care. In addition to guidelines, measures, public reports, and tools useful for improving health care decision-making, the Alliance will also encourage educational sessions and other collaborative work for health care professionals to learn evidence-based practices and hone skills in using the associated tools.