Our Community Partners

Our four community partners bring a deep understanding of the health care landscape in their respective communities, including knowledge of the health systems and payers, market forces, and the policy environment. Furthermore, these organizations have been assembling, aggregating, and publicly reporting standardized clinical quality, patient experience, and total cost/resource use measures for physician organizations, ambulatory practice sites, and hospitals within their states and communities. The communities in which they work are diverse in terms of market characteristics, health system types and configurations, and populations served.

Our partners are leaders in their communities as well as nationally. They have worked for more than a decade to promote improvements in quality and cost performance. The multi-stakeholder collaborations they have built are critical to facilitating the work of the Center and for providing opportunities for dissemination of Center products to payers, provider organizations, and policymakers within their communities and nationally.

Integrated Health Care Association

Integrated Health Care Association (IHA) is a statewide multi-stakeholder organization that works to improve quality and to promote affordable health care for all Californians. IHA is nationally known as an innovator in tying quality measures to payment (i.e., value-based P4P) and for working to create a common performance measurement platform used statewide by payers and providers. IHA's members include health systems, physician organizations (POs), major health plans (Anthem Blue Cross, Cigna, Aetna, United Healthcare, Health Net, Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente, and Western Health Advantage), purchasers (CalPERS, Pacific Business Group on Health), researchers, trading partners (e.g. health information technology companies), and health care consumers.

Washington Health Alliance

The Washington Health Alliance is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit with more than 180 member organizations that work collaboratively to transform Washington State's health care system for the better. The Alliance brings together organizations that share a commitment to drive change in health care by offering a forum for critical conversation and aligned efforts by stakeholders including purchasers, providers, health plans, consumers and other partners. The Alliance offers trusted reporting of progress on measures of health care quality and value. A cornerstone of the Alliance's work is the Community Checkup, a report to the public comparing the performance of medical groups, hospitals and health plans and offering a community-level view on important measures of health care quality. The Alliance was one of the inaugural members of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Aligning Forces for Quality Program, and was one of three states selected to participate in the Commonwealth Fund's State Action for Avoidable Readmissions (STAAR) program.

Minnesota Community Measurement

Minnesota Community Measurement (MNCM) has been publicly reporting quality measures at the medical group, physician practice, and hospital levels since 2004. The organization is known nationally for its multi-stakeholder collaborative approach to data aggregation and measurement; and for the development of innovative measures such as the "D5" diabetes composite measure and multiple patient-reported outcome measures. Currently MNCM collects, analyzes and publicly reports 76 measures on chronic and preventive care, specialty care, hospital care, health information technology, patient experience and total cost of care. Their reporting efforts capture more than 1,300 primary care and multispecialty physician practice sites in Minnesota; the underlying data capture almost every eligible patient in the state.

Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality

Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ) is a consortium of health care organizations, including medical groups, hospitals, health plans, and health systems, including the state's largest health care systems—Aurora Health Care and the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics / University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation. WCHQ also collaborates with other health care stakeholders including purchasers, consumers, policy and advocacy organizations, government agencies, research institutions, and foundations. WCHQ has reported standardized clinical process and outcomes measures at the medical group level since 2004 and at the clinic level since 2013. WCHQ also reports patient experience measures. Today, its reports cover 60 - 65% of the state's primary care physicians, representing 40 members and 286 ambulatory primary care clinics. Wisconsin is home to many highly integrated health systems, such as the Marshfield Clinic in central Wisconsin, Gundersen Health System in LaCrosse, Bellin Health System in Green Bay, Dean Clinic/St. Mary's in Madison, and ThedaCare in Appleton. Wisconsin, with WCHQ as the lead, was one of sixteen communities selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to participate in its Aligning Forces for Quality Program.