At Virginia Mason, collaboration among providers, employers, and health plans to transform care cut costs and improved quality.

Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle has worked in collaboration with health plans and employers to facilitate development of standardized approaches to care of patients with common conditions. These efforts have eliminated unnecessary treatment and decreased costs to employers, health plans, patients, and providers. We describe our collaborative approach and illustrate it with the example of improved treatment for patients with uncomplicated headache, for which we have achieved 91 percent patient satisfaction, decreased use of advanced imaging by 23 percent, and provided same-day appointments in 95 percent of cases. As a model for improving quality while reducing cost, the Virginia Mason experience demonstrates that a multispecialty group practice, hospital, employers, and health plans can define quality and align performance and payment along common goals.