Comparison Reports

Guidelines and Recommendations

Collaboration

The Alliance has developed the Community Checkup report on the health care performance in the region. This comparison report reflects community agreement on how to best define and measure key elements of health care provided in doctors offices and hospitals and for products and services offered by health plans. Where possible, the report draws from evidence-based national standards. The intent has been to create a regional report in which the results are displayed to be understandable, consistent and reasonably reliable for health care decision-making by individuals, clinics, hospitals, employers, unions, policy makers and others. 

The online Community Checkup report is at www.WACommunityCheckup.org

See Alliance rules for using the Community Checkup report

The creation of a single 'suite of reports' for the region is a step forward in the evolution of health care transparency (information sharing). Today, various reports on the same topic are produced by health plans, employers and others, each with their own approach to defining, measuring and analyzing aspects of health care performance, often using only the subset of data to which they have access as an employer, health plan or other organization. The result is a multitude of reports, some public but none that reflect comprensive data from across the region. These multiple reports often reach different and sometimes conflicting conclusions. Not surprisingly, that makes it difficult for individuals, employers and other purchasers to easily know where the best quality, value and customer service (i.e., patient experience) is provided in health care.

For physicians and hospitals, the multitude of reports are not as helpful as they could be to help them identify where improvement is needed, because nearly every report has "nuanced differences" in how issues are defined, measured and summarized. Changing behavior to improve their results on one element in one report may result that same provider getting a lower rating for that same element in a competing report. As a community, Alliance participants are working together to define, measure and report on health care performance in the region to take a major step forward in sharing health care information to improve quality, cost and patient experience.

To explore other performance measurement websites that are in place locally or around the country, click here.