Congratulations to Kaiser Permanente Washington and UnitedHealthcare, winners of the Foundation for Health Care Quality’s first annual Mountain Climber Award for Excellence in Equity awards.

Our Bree Collaborative awards system is part of our state-wide evaluation of whether and how Bree guidelines have been implemented into practice. Following our region’s love of the outdoors, we have three tiers from pathfinder to trailblazer to mountain climber. Pathfinder awards are automatically given to all health plans, delivery sites, and purchasers who complete our implementation checklists. Trailblazer awards are given to our community for having high levels of implementation or high fidelity in existing processes to our Bree Collaborative Guidelines. Our Mountain Climber award is given to organizations who apply after having first received a trailblazer award for exemplary implementation efforts that focus on Bree Collaborative pillars of transformation including equity, data exchange and transparency, person-centered care, and accountable financing. Winners are selected by a panel of volunteers who score submissions on key elements, including generalizability of their work, innovation, overcoming barriers, and the breadth of implementation work.

The Bree Collaborative has a strong history of developing guidelines on current, evidence-based best-practices, developed collaboratively and transparently by clinicians and other experts. Guidelines illustrate what each organization’s role should look like in a quality health care system. Our intention is that this award system is to call out and celebrate organizations leading the way in quality care that aligns with our guidelines.

While our panel of judges were impressed with all the projects submitted for the first annual Mountain Climber award, these two projects stood out for their clear connection to the Bree guidelines, excellent examples of measurable impacts, and the comprehensive system change created to support and increase health equity across both organizations.

We look forward to presenting both Kaiser Permanente Washington and UnitedHealthcare with a trophy and certificate at the Bree Member Meeting on May 22nd from 1-3pm and we will be inviting both organizations to present on their equity work at the Patient Safety Coalition’s conference this coming October.

In addition, we would also like to congratulate our Trailblazer award winners for their hard work on demonstrating a level of care that has high fidelity with many of the Bree Collaboratives guidelines:

• HealthPoint for Addiction and Dependence Treatment, Opioid Use Disorder Treatment and Primary Care.
• Arbor Health-Morton Hospital for Potentially Avoidable Readmissions.
• Community Health Plan of Washington for Prostate Cancer Screening, Low Back Pain, Opioid Rx, Dental Opioid Prescribing, Addiction and Dependence Treatment, Potentially Avoidable Hospital Readmissions, Share Decision Making, LGBTQ Care, Pediatric Psychotropics, Opioid Use Disorder Treatment, Suicide Care, Behavioral Health Integration, Hepatitis C, Outpatient Infection Control, Colorectal Cancer Screening, Risk of Violence Towards Others, Reproductive and Sexual Health, and Primary Care.
• UW Medicine/UW Physicians for Obstetrics, Oncology Care, Potentially Avoidable Hospital Readmissions, Low Back Pain, Opioid Rx, End-of-life Planning, Addiction and Dependence Treatment, Share Decision Making, Alzheimer’s and other Dementias, Pediatric Psychotropics, Telehealth, Opioid Use Disorder Treatment, Cervical Cancer Screening Pediatric Asthma, Colorectal Cancer Screening and Palliative Care.
• Kaiser Permanente for LGBTQ Care, Telehealth, Palliative Care, Obstetrics, Reproductive Health, Oncology, Primary Care, Prostate Cancer Screening, Behavioral Health Integration, Suicide Care, Psychotropics, Potentially Avoidable Readmissions, and Addiction and Dependence Treatment.
• United Health Care for Oncology Care, Opioid Prescribing, Dental Opioid Prescribing, End-of-life Care Planning, Addiction and Dependence Treatment, Obstetrics, Potentially Avoidable Hospital Readmissions, Shared Decision Making, LGBTQ Care, Alzheimer’s and other Dementias, Pediatric Psychotropic Prescribing, Suicide Care, Behavioral Health Integration, Cervical Cancer Screening, Pediatric Asthma, Outpatient Infection Control, Colorectal Cancer Screening, Risk of Violence Towards Others, Reproductive and Sexual Health, Palliative Care, Primary Care, Opioid Use Disorder Treatment, and Telehealth.
• MultiCare for Obstetrics, Oncology Care, Potentially Avoidable Hospital Readmissions, Prostate Cancer Screening, Low Back Pain, End-of-life Care Planning, LGBTQ Care, Shared Decision Making, Opioid Use Disorder Treatment, Suicide Care, Behavioral Health Integration, Pediatric Asthma, Outpatient Infection Control, Colorectal Cancer Screening, Primary Care and Reproductive and Sexual Health.
• The Everett Clinic/Polyclinic, part of Optum Health for Opioid Prescribing/Metrics.

For more information on our awards and what comes next, please visit our Awards webpage.

On behalf of the Foundation for Health Care Quality, the Bree Collaborative, and our esteemed panel of judges, congratulations on a job well done!