Vision, Mission, Goals and Guiding Principles

Health Care Quality Improvement Strategy

Position Statements

Public Policy and Government Relations

Aligning Forces for Quality

History

Participants

Consumer Representation

Board of Directors

Staff

Driving Directions

Employment

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Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) is the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s signature effort to lift the overall quality of health care in 17 targeted communities, reduce racial and ethnic disparities and provide models for national reform. AF4Q asks the people who get care, give care and pay for care to work together toward common, fundamental objectives to lead to better care.

Each of the AF4Q communities builds its initiative around a core, multi-stakeholder leadership alliance working to advance the goals and activities of AF4Q at the local level. These alliances are broad-based and include participation from physicians, nurses, patients, consumers and consumer groups, purchasers, hospitals, health plans, safety net providers and others.

The Puget Sound Health Alliance became an AF4Q Community in 2006.

A critical element to the AF4Q quality-improvement strategy is the measurement of health care performance in a given region according to criteria agreed upon by doctors and other experts. The Alliance collects data about the performance of doctors, clinics, hospitals and others in the Puget Sound region. It then makes this data public through the Alliance’s Community Checkup to help everyone in the health care system better understand what is necessary to improve health care quality.