All Articles

• Total Health evaluation aims to help purchasers’ dollars go farther

  In January 2011, Group Health introduced a new "value-based" medical plan for its mid-large group market. The groundbreaking product addressed a top priority for health care purchasers: finding cost savings that don't compromise health or quality of care.
• Patient-centered health IT helps advance high-quality care

  A key provision in 2009's economic stimulus legislation propelled health information technology (IT) into national health care policy debates.
• Now’s the time: Award and endowment hail Dr. Wagner’s lifework

  Deliberations over health care’s future continue to be divisive. The U.S. Senate “super committee”—deadlocked over deficits linked largely to health care spending—has thrown in the towel. The Affordable Care Act is headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Dr. Rob Reid: Bridging research and operations at Group Health

  Robert (Rob) Reid, MD, PhD, answers questions about his new role as Group Health’s first-ever associate medical director of health services research & knowledge translation.
• Online messaging delivers follow-up care for depression

  Online messaging can deliver organized follow-up care for depression effectively and efficiently, according to a randomized controlled trial of 208 Group Health patients that the Journal of General Internal Medicine e-published March 2011.
• ‘Teaching’ computers to read doctors’ notes promises gains in research efficiency

  “Natural language processing” (NLP) is a computing function Group Health Research Institute is testing and using to target mentions of specific words and phrases in this free text by parsing human-language sentence structure. As the accuracy of NLP is perfected, this technology can supplement skilled chart abstraction and may provide faster access to larger, richer bodies of data.
• Time to raise how many mammograms radiologists must read?

  Changing policy could make screening for breast cancer more accurate