As we gear up to the inauguration, many in the healthcare world are fielding questions from the public about the uncertain future of the Affordable Care Act. While even those of us “on the inside” don’t have all the answers, there were some bipartisan perspectives from the recent State of Reform Conference that we found…
Opioid addiction is driving the drug overdoses which are claiming too many lives in the US. In 2015 alone, 718 people in Washington state died from opioid-related overdoses. The epidemic is growing quickly, devastating Washington families and communities. There are many factors driving this crisis and nobody can solve it alone. Together the Washington Health…
Doctors and other health care providers take many types of measurements – between vital signs, screenings, lab tests, and x-rays, it can seem like things are constantly being measured. However, there’s one significant measurement that is often missing from the picture: the patient reported outcome. Hiding in plain sight, this is information that can only…
Most of us see our doctors in a fee-for-service system – this is where doctors and hospitals charge fees for each separate service they provide. Office visits, tests, procedures, and even microtasks like individual screenings can be billed separately. One major drawback to fee-for-service is rewarding quantity over quality. This type of payment model can…
Getting feedback from our community is an important part of how we develop recommendations. We want to make sure that our recommendations make sense; are reasonable for patients, health care providers, clinics, hospitals, health plans, and others; are based in the best available evidence; but still push our health care system toward higher quality and…
On Wednesday, Bree Collaborative members voted on our work for 2017. Along with re-reviewing our Total Knee and Total Hip Replacement Bundle and Warranty our members elected to create workgroups and develop evidence-based recommendations for: – Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias – Hysterectomy – Opioid Use Disorder Treatment Thank you to the many community members who…
Since we formed in 2011, we have made recommendations, such as having goals of care conversations as a regular part of oncology care, for improving quality and value for patients in our State’s health care system. Some of these recommendations have been formally adopted into contracts. See last month’s blog post: From Concept to Contracting:…
Thank you to all who gave us input on selecting new topics. We discussed all these suggestions at our July meeting, decided on six, and will narrow this down to three final topics in September. The topics coming out of July’s meeting are: – Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia – Addiction – Blood and Blood Product…
Replacing a joint—especially a knee or hip—is a procedure that millions of Americans need each year. It can give people a mobility and freedom from pain they haven’t enjoyed in years. It’s also a procedure that lends itself to a lot of variation. If best practices aren’t followed, it can lead to complications and hospital…
We think of value-based purchasing as a philosophy pushing our health care system to provide better care at a lower cost to help us all live healthier lives. Most of the health care that we receive today is fee-for-service, where clinicians, hospitals, and others are payed for the number of services they provide. Across the…
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