Originally published January 4, 2007 at 12:00 AM | Page modified January 4, 2007 at 10:39 AM
Group close to issuing health clinic report cards
For the past several years, employers have fretted that health-care costs have been rising at twice the rate of inflation. Starbucks, for example, announced...
Seattle Times staff reporter
For the past several years, employers have fretted that health-care costs have been rising at twice the rate of inflation.
Starbucks, for example, announced in late 2005 that it spent more on employee health insurance that year than it had on coffee beans.
Other local employers, from King County to Boeing, have looked for ways to figure out which health providers give "high-quality, efficient" health care — which usually translates as "good and low-cost" — and, just as important, which ones don't.
Enter the Puget Sound Health Alliance, a coalition of insurers, government agencies and some of Puget Sound's largest businesses, which is gearing up to crunch all that raw data — your health-care insurance claims — and, by mid-2007, spit out public report cards rating health clinics.
To hear those most involved, it's a historic effort. And Wednesday, with a hailstorm of buzzwords, federal Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, Gov. Christine Gregoire and King County Executive Ron Sims joined a slew of other government and business leaders at Starbucks headquarters in Seattle to praise the effort and predict it all will soon become meaningful to average consumers of health care, too.
Leavitt said his department has taken the first step in qualifying the alliance to include Medicare patient information, which would greatly expand its database, presumably making ratings more accurate.
For its first report, the alliance will compare selected clinics on the way they take care of heart disease, diabetes, low back pain, depression, and the use of medications.
Information
![]()
![]()
The Puget Sound Health Alliance:
www.pugetsoundhealthalliance.org
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt's proposals: www.hhs.gov/transparency
Eventually, business members of the alliance expect to use these ratings. But for now, the businesses won't say how.
The bottom-line goal, though, is to improve health care and stem cost increases, they all say.
But getting there won't be easy.
Aggressive advertisers push expensive drugs and treatments directly to patients, even though they may be no more effective than less-expensive alternatives.
Another problem: Ratings now are based entirely on insurance claims, not on clinical data. Doctors have objected, saying claims data alone can't accurately reflect quality. And some employees and their unions worry that companies are more interested in saving money than in promoting their health.
In one recent local example, Regence BlueShield tried to rate the "quality and efficiency" of doctors on the Boeing engineers' union health plan, excluding physicians who didn't measure up. The doctors sued and the insurer abandoned the effort.
Despite such questions, there are pockets of harmony in the medical world, says Dr. Hugh Straley, the Group Health Cooperative medical director who serves on the health alliance's quality-improvement committee.
The alliance plans to move forward, slowly adding measurements where there is consensus about what constitutes good, cost-effective health care, says spokeswoman Diane Giese.
"You've got to start somewhere," she says. "Trying to get it perfect means it will never happen."
Carol M. Ostrom: 206-464-2249 or costrom@seattletimes.com
Information from Times staff reporter Kyung Song was included in this report.
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
Food-safety lawyer's wish: Put me out of business
Illegal workers quietly let go
Metro won't cut bus service after all
Jerry Large: Food-bank theft turns into a gift
Bumper to Bumper: How can the city let bridges go dark?

PNW Magazine | Easy As Pie
A little friendly competition between professional pie-baker Kate McDermott and The Seatttle Times' Kathleen Triesch Saul is handled with great taste.
nwautos
Local riders say they've seen a surge in scooter interest in recent years, mostly from people wanting another commuting option. Seattle now ranks as o...
Post a comment
nwjobs
Post a comment
Michelle Goodman blogs about work/life balance.
Do you suffer from "sitting disease"?
Post a comment
- 'The Road' takes Viggo Mortensen to Mount St. Helens and Astoria, Ore.
- Tugboat sinks at Seattle waterfront pier
- Illegal workers quietly let go
- Child-support error costs nearly $21,000
- Vikings easily beat the Seahawks
- Craigslist adoption ad: A plea by young mother-to-be? A scam?
- Chase shrugs off loss of CD investors
- Woman stabbed by stranger in North Seattle
- Snow piles up on Cascade slopes
- Denny Triangle gains skyline, but tenants slow to come
- Illegal workers quietly let go
374 - Climate change speeds up since 1997 Kyoto accord
210 - Vikings easily beat the Seahawks
171 - Metro won't cut bus service after all
156 - New Husky recruit: Enes Kanter
98 - Historic health care bill clears Senate hurdle
95 - Tattoos at Mill Creek Church pierce skin, soul
83 - Middleton says Huskies "plan on scoring at least 50 points'' Saturday
82 - Jerry Brewer: Seahawks can't lean on the Hutch Crutch now
74 - Seattle woman charged with knife attack on boyfriend's ex
66
- Sprouts, raw fish on attorney's 'do not eat' list
- Tattoos at Mill Creek church pierce skin, soul
- Food-safety lawyer's wish: Put me out of business
- Illegal workers quietly let go
- Architects, chefs find 'kid' within to build Gingerbread Village
- Rediscovering Moab, 'the most beautiful place on Earth'
- It's possible to recover a life lost to hoarding
- Child-support error costs nearly $21,000
- 'The Road' takes Viggo Mortensen to Mount St. Helens and Astoria, Ore.
- Taste | The Great Pie Bake-off pits friends and fruit





