Here in the Puget Sound area a few years ago the health care costs for local employers (including government) were increasing so quickly that it became clear that everyone needed to come together.

We (I was one of the original members of the consumer advisory board and serve on the Health IT committee) formed the Puget Sound Health Alliance “a regional partnership involving employers, physicians, hospitals, patients, health plans, and others working together to improve quality and efficiency while reducing the rate of health care cost increases across King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties: and it now covers over 2 million people (through their insurance carriers).

Alliance participants agree to use evidence to identify and measure quality health care, then produce publicly-available reports designed to help improve health care decision-making. Reports measuring the quality of care provided in the Puget Sound region, along with useful information and tools, can be helpful in health care decisions, including identifying effective care, choosing or designing health benefit plans, deciding which doctor to see, knowing what questions to ask to get the best quality, and understanding what we each can do to improve our own health

We use claims data (and we are very aware of its limitations) to produce qualty reports http://www.wacommunitycheckup.org/ for now but we will eventually be able to move to using claims data to identify those clinics and providers that deliver exceptional care to their customer / patients. The quality committees include all of the players and are open inclusive by design and reference the national quality standards.

Take a look at our reports for some ideas of how we use this. I would love your feedback as always.

Sherry Reynolds – aka @cascadia on twitter
Executive Director – Alliance4Health