HCCI will continue to analyze spending trends; Researchers will have HCCI data access until the end of 2022
The Health Care Cost Institute and United Healthcare are sunsetting their data collaboration relationship agreement, that has provided United’s deidentified insurance claims data for analyses of U.S. healthcare spending, utilization, and market performance. HCCI continues to receive data from its remaining three partners — Aetna, Humana and Kaiser Permanente.
“HCCI would like to thank United Healthcare for being a founding data contributor to what is a critical resource for researchers and the general public to understand the drivers of health care costs in the U.S.,” said Niall Brennan, president and CEO of HCCI. “While we are disappointed United will no longer contribute data to HCCI, we are proud of the work we have done using United’s and other payers’ data to foster a more robust debate on health care costs in recent years.”
United is one of four major health insurers that share data for in-house analysis at HCCI, as well as outside research through data-sharing agreements HCCI coordinates with universities and selected other organizations. HCCI and its payer partners remain committed to their shared mission, and will approve up to ten new external research projects incorporating United data between now and June 30, 2019. These ten new research projects are in addition to any projects approved under the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Data for Action program. All new and existing HCCI research partners will have the option to continue to access HCCI’s combined dataset, including United data, until December 31, 2022.
“Independent multi-payer claims databases are critical for understanding broader health system performance and promoting transparency,” said Bob Town, Chair of the HCCI board and the James L. and Nancy Powell Centennial Professor in American Economic Principles at the University of Texas-Austin. “HCCI and its board are seeking new partners to enable continued analysis of the ever-growing U.S. healthcare sector. Much work remains to be done.”
Since its inception in 2011 as an independent, non-profit research institute, HCCI has released dozens of reports and interactive tools using information from its database, which currently represents nearly 50 million covered lives each year, including data from employer-sponsored plans, Medicare Advantage, and the individual market.