This June we celebrate 25 years of care outcomes assessment. Hard to believe that our Cardiac COAP started in the ‘90s – and has since grown into obstetrical care, general surgery, and spine surgery. These four have proven to be valuable parts of our health care ecosystem, allowing the type of physician-driven health care improvement...

Don’t boil the ocean often comes up in health care. We can’t do everything, or at least we can’t change every single piece of a complicated system all at once. When we discuss areas of health care to improve, our goal of healthy, happy, and thriving Washingtonians can seem vast. Often, identifying a problem can...

Lately my mind has been percolating around the twin challenges to our collective future of artificial intelligence and global warming. As the mother of two young kids, I must believe in a future where they will be able to experience joy and purpose. Both elements throw doubt on my predictive ability how my little ones...

Trust is delicate, needing time to establish, and hard to maintain. Trust between a person and their clinician has immense implications for successful diagnosis and then management, treatment, and healing. Clinicians must trust the health care system in which they practice, systems must trust clinicians and other staff, and we all must trust (to some...

This year our Washington State Patient Safety Coalition will start to map our future with through a strategic planning process to determine our next group of initiatives. This is where we recommit to current initiatives or sunset and introduce new initiatives. Right now we are focused on: Improving the Diagnostic Process through better provider and...

2023 sees the launch of three new Bree Collaborative workgroups. Each workgroup will meet monthly to discuss common barriers and develop best practices to improve access, affordability, outcomes, and equity in Washington state. Meeting dates and a brief description of each workgroup are listed below. Please reach out to Bree staff nlocke@qualityhealth.org if you are interested in participating...

By Ginny Weir, MPH, CEO I am more than proud to announce the publication of Obstetrical Care Outcomes Assessment Program: A White Paper in Three Parts outlining how OB COAP partners around clinical data to improve birth outcomes. Our series is directed to everyone involved in the birth of babies and funded by a generous...

My back has been hurting over the last month or so. I know that personal health is one of the seven topics we are not supposed to talk about and also that acute low back pain has impacted about one in four of us in the last three months and will impact MOST of us...

By Ginny Weir, MPH, CEO We have usually paid for health care in ways that encourage more services — whether they improved health or not – a fee for each service. Ten years ago, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation started testing payment and service delivery models beyond fee for service. The goal was...

Aside from blackberry season and my birthday, August is my time of self-care, a time to step back and try not to bake in the sun like lawns across the pacific northwest. In How I self-care New York times staff list some of what they do to step back and care for themselves. At the...