Join us this Wednesday, March 16!

The Bree Collaborative is meeting this week – Wednesday, March 16 from 12:30 – 4:30 at the beautiful Waterfront Activities Center on the University of Washington Campus. Join us for coffee and hear how we are working together to improve Washington State’s health care system.  Agenda is here.

Members will be voting on final adoption of our Oncology Care Report and Recommendations after reviewing suggestions, critiques, and commendations from almost 40 community members. Thank you to all those who submitted comments and I encourage anyone interested in our recommendations to email me at gweir@qualityhealth.org or attend our meeting. Chairs of our Pediatric Psychotropic Drug Use, Opioid Prescribing Guideline Implementation, and Bariatric Bundled Payment Models workgroups will give us updates on workgroup progress and members will vote on approval of the charter and roster for our Bariatric Bundled Payment Models workgroup.

One of our ongoing conversations is how the Bree Collaborative can impact health disparities. We will be spending some time on this issue next week and will hear from the Washington Health Alliance on their 2015 Disparities in Care Report and the Washington Patient Safety Coalition about their new focus on health disparities.

I recently learned that Washington State ranks 48th out of 50 on need for behavioral health services compared to access to care according to the 2015 Parity or Disparity: The State of Mental Health in America report! Too many people are not getting the care they need. Our community has a lot of work to do – a good motivator as we start our Behavioral Health Integration workgroup.

Hope to see you next week!

Ginny Weir, MPH
Bree Collaborative Program Director