I enjoyed reading this article. It is a tribute to the work of a terrific Executive staff, King Countys employees, the Countys unions, healthcare advisers, numerous employers, and the healthcare delivery system and plans. It was a total team effort. It was also lots of fun despite the considerable risks. Naysayers were plentiful! We proved them wrong!!! A decade ago, the public officials running King County, Washington were perturbed by their soaring employee benefits expenses. The upward cost trend in 2003 hit 13 percent, and at that rate, the budget of the county encompassing Seattle and its suburbs would be blown apart within a decade. County Executive Ron Sims convened a task force, and gave it a broad mandate: re-examine how the county buys its health benefits, but don’t stop there. Look also at the structure and dynamic of the delivery of health care in the region. Six months later, the task force produced a report, and shortly after that the county introduced its Healthy Incentives program for its 19,000 employees and their spouses and domestic partners. Healthy Incentives asks county workers and their families to take better care of themselves and to patronize higher-quality providers. Over the years since it went into effect, the smoking rate has dropped from 12 percent to 5 percent, and the amount of weight lost by county employees is measured in tons. These measures have saved the county taxpayers $46 million in projected costs between 2007 and 2011. .... The county’s partner in this endeavor has been the Washington Health Alliance, a collaboration of purchasers and other health care stakeholders that grew out of that first county task force. The Alliance’s work “has been so important to us,” said Brooke Bascom, the county’s communications director for Healthy Incentives. “The environment in which employees choose where to get care has a huge impact on our costs.” The then-Puget Sound Health Alliance was founded in 2004 with funding from King County. In 2007, the Alliance became one of the four original pilot sites selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of its Aligning Forces for Quality initiative, a multi-year effort that grew to include 16 sites focusing on improving health care quality and affordability. In January 2014 the Alliance expanded to encompass the entire state and changed its name. ....
Posted on: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 00:43:49 +0000
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