Insurers Turn Over Claims Data

Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and the UnitedHeath Group will provide data for more than 5 billion medical claims to the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) to offer new insights into healthcare costs, utilization, and intensity.

According to the newly formed nonprofit’s press release, “HCCI’s mission is to promote independent research and analysis on the causes of rising U.S. health spending; to provide policy makers, consumers, and researchers with better, more transparent information on what is driving healthcare costs; and to help ensure that, over time, the nation is able to get greater value from its health spending.”

The four insurers’ claim data represents more than $1 trillion of healthcare activity from more than 5,000 hospitals and 1 million service providers from calendar year 2000 through the present. Additionally, the commercial data will be updated regularly to ensure its usefulness for research purposes. Data will be de-identified in accordance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requirements.

HCCI will provide access to the data to accredited researchers whose proposals meet the organiation’s data and scientific usage standards. Beginning in 2012, HCCI plans to publish its own scorecards and supporting analysis on aggregate trends of healthcare cost and utilization.

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