We were deeply disappointed at the Washington Legislature’s failure this year to pass any measure that might help rein in soaring health-care premiums, arguably one of the top concerns of small businesses here.

Perhaps, though, it was naïve to expect answers from Olympia, given this state’s botched attempt to implement health-care reform measures in the 1990s. Legislators might be doing employers a favor by forcing them to look inward for solutions.

The simple fact is, employers have no choice. Annual double-digit percentage premium increases can’t go on indefinitely. As some point, something breaks down. Employers either begin dropping benefit plans because they find they no longer can afford them, or they shift so much of the cost to their employees that the employees can’t afford them. In either case, affordable access to health care shrinks.

The good news is that the business and medical sectors can provide some solutions to rising health-care costs by intensifying their efforts on a number of fronts. Those fronts include promoting wellness programs, educating employees on how to be responsible health-care consumers, monitoring more closely those who suffer from or are strong candidates for chronic diseases, and developing benefit packages that offer incentives and disincentives related to lifestyle choices.

Clearly, much of that effort needs to focus on boosting the accountability of those who use health care, and employers are in a unique position to press the issue.

Locally, we’re encouraged by the formative efforts of the Inland Northwest Business Coalition on Health, a 6-month-old alliance that’s intent on implementing programs aimed at stabilizing health-care costs and maintaining affordable benefit packages here.

Though still working to establish a strong employer-driven support base, the coalition has drawn up some ambitious goals. It plans, among other things, to gather data on the 15 most prevalent diseases here and to evaluate their effects on absenteeism and productivity. It also plans to develop prevention and disease-management programs and explore other ways to eliminate waste in the delivery of health care. Separately, a health-care insurer here, the Physician Hospital Community Organization, is undertaking programs similar to the coalition’s and is meeting with early success. We wish both organizations will in those endeavors.

We also applaud a Spokane doctor who plans to bring a program here that has proven successful in other communities at providing comprehensive medical care to the low-income uninsured. Called Project Access, the program coordinates charity care provided by primary-care doctors, specialists, hospitals, pharmacies, and community-based clinics. Its premise is to spread such care out over more providers, so that the cost doesn’t become to onerous, and to ensure that people being treated through the program receive all of the care they need to improve their health.

It has had startling success in Buncombe County, N.C., the community that launched the program: By improving the health of low-income, uninsured people, Project Access has reduced the need for expensive emergency-room care among that group and has lowered the pre-capita cost to county residents of charity medical care. One official there called Project Access doing “the right thing, the smart way.”

Do the new efforts being tried in Spokane hold possibly the best answers for keeping health care affordable and accessible here? Who knows? What’s important is, their backers aren’t waiting for guidance from state lawmakers to find out.