Sharing data on health care costs to spark solutions

Health care spending in the United States is more than $3 trillion a year, straining the budgets of families, businesses and taxpayers alike. Public officials, employers and the public need accurate and accessible data to help them best understand the factors behind rising health spending and inspire new solutions to address it.

A new, multi-year data sharing partnership between Blue Health Intelligence® (BHI®) and the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) is expanding access to accurate and secure information on insurance claims that can help in identifying what is driving U.S. health care costs and what can be done to improve the quality of care patients receive.

Commitment to greater transparency

Independent researchers utilize HCCI information to develop cutting-edge, robust and relevant analysis on health care costs and other trends. HCCI’s dataset will now include de-identified medical claims from participating Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) companies, combined with data HCCI already obtains from other commercial payers. The expanded data set will bolster researchers’ ability to provide meaningful insights and trend analysis. HCCI’s dataset is one of the few independent sources of information on people who get health insurance through their employers—the largest single source of health coverage for Americans.

Besides providing a national overview of trends in health care cost and quality, HCCI provides in-depth information on state developments, and also enables researchers to explore topics including which medical services patients are using, and how treatment for various conditions and diseases is evolving.