CMS State Innovation Model (SIM) Test Award - Washington

Program Location: 
Olympia, WA
Payer Type: 
Grant
Partner Organizations: 
Bree Collaborative
Pugent Sound Health Alliance
Payers: 
Medicaid
Premera
Regence
Aetna
Cigna
Community Health Plan of Washington
Group Health Cooperative
Molina
Description: 

The State of Washington will receive approximately $64.9 million to implement and test its State Health Care Innovation Plan. The award will go to funding Healthier Washington, an initiative based on the Washington State Health Care Innovation Plan. 

The initiative proposes to invest deeply in connections and active collaboration with Washington's communities and providers to produce better health and better care at lower cost. The funding is Washington's opportunity to take the State Health Care Innovation Plan--completed in December 2013 with the participation of hundreds of individuals across the state--to the next level of implementation.

The initiative provides significant investment in Washington's health care future. The Healthier Washington initiative will:

  1. Build healthier communities and people through prevention and early attention to disease
  2. Integrate care and social supports for individuals who have both physical and behavioral health needs
  3. Reward quality heath care over quantity, with state government leading by example as Washington's largest purchaser of health care

Report to the Legislature: State Health Care Innovation Plan Annual Status Report, January 1, 2015

For more information, see the Washington project narrative.

Payment Model: 

Washington will: 1) reform payment by shifting from fee-for-service to new payment methods that provide incentives for professionals and facilities to work together to achieve higher value, lower cost care; 2) build on our state’s quality collaboratives, the Bree Collaborative (Bree) and the Puget Sound Health Alliance
(Alliance), to convene multiple payers, providers and others to develop transparent, evidencebased, quality and utilization metrics and evaluation criteria; and 3) start this effort with the work that the collaboratives already initiated: obstetrics/deliveries; and managing chronic conditions.

Last updated June 2015
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