Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Innovator for Quality Care Nominated to Head Medicare and Medicaid

It is good news that Don Berwick has been nominated to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS).

Berwick is President, CEO, and co-founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), a Harvard professor, and one of the nation’s leading authorities on health care quality. He is a fan of Group Health. In 2006, Berwick was the speaker at the Group Health Annual Meeting, our guest at the Gift of Health Gala, and received our Foundation’s 2006 Innovators in Health Care award.

Between 2005 and 2006, Group Health participated with medical centers nationwide in one of IHI’s most famous initiatives, the “100,000 Lives Campaign.” This campaign called upon hospitals to make six evidence-based changes to their care that would save patient lives. Within one year, the initiative saved an estimated 120,000 lives nationwide, including 1,500 in Washington state. Since then the project blossomed, as more than 3,000 hospitals representing more than 90 percent of the hospital beds in America have signed on to the campaign, saving tens of thousands of lives.

Continue reading ‘Innovator for Quality Care Nominated to Head Medicare and Medicaid’

Historic step gives more Americans access to care

Passage of major health care reform legislation in the House on Sunday is a momentous, positive step to expand coverage to more Americans.

There are, of course, many details still to be determined, and the impact of a variety of specific measures is still unclear. But the bill will expand coverage—via Medicaid and subsidized premiums for individual and family plans—to bring health care to more than 32 million people nationally, and almost 500,000 people here in Washington state.

In some ways, the work is just beginning for us at Group Health. Continue reading ‘Historic step gives more Americans access to care’