All Articles

• Documentary Escape Fire inspires innovative action at a critical time

  Group Health’s care and coverage work together to achieve healthier outcomes for patients; and how we have become a national leader by staying true to our founders' mission.
• Innovation grant leads to improvements for diagnosing shoulder problems

  The Partnership for Innovation is a Group Health Foundation donor-funded program that allows Group Health providers and staff to test innovations with the potential to improve care, lower costs, and boost patient satisfaction.
• Biennial mammograms best for ages 50–74, even with dense breasts

  Screening for breast cancer every two years appears just as beneficial as yearly mammograms for women age 50–74, with significantly fewer “false positives”—even for women whose breasts were dense or who used hormone therapy for menopause.
• Colon cancer screening doubles with new e-health record use

  Researchers used electronic health records to identify Group Health patients who weren’t screened regularly for cancer of the colon and rectum—and to encourage them to be screened. This centralized, automated approach doubled these patients’ rates of on-time screening—and saved health costs—over two years. The March 5 Annals of Internal Medicine published the randomized controlled trial.
• A tale of two ACOs: New study compares models

  When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, it called for the establishment of accountable care organizations (ACOs).
• Biennial and yearly mammograms give older women same benefit

  Among older women, getting a mammogram every two years was just as beneficial as getting a mammogram annually, and led to significantly fewer false-positive results, according to a Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) study including patients and researchers from Group Health. The national study of more than 140,000 women between ages 66 and 89 is in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
• Less reaction to DTaP vaccine given in kids’ thighs than arms

  Children age 12 to 35 months who receive DTaP vaccine in their thigh muscle rather than their arm are around half as likely to be brought in for medical attention for an injection-site reaction. So says a new study of 1.4 million children at Group Health and seven other Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) centers across the country, e-published on January 14 in Pediatrics.