New Public Data Resources

Several new health care related websites that we believe will be useful to members, have launched in recent weeks:

The Health Care Cost Institute is a private, independent, nonprofit entity committed to creating the nation’s most comprehensive source of information on health care costs and utilization, and promoting research on the drivers of escalating health care costs and utilization in the U.S. As the first effort of its kind to create and maintain a regularly updated repository of commercial health care cost information, HCCI’s mission is to promote independent research and analysis on the causes of rising US health spending; to provide policy makers, consumers, and researchers with better, more transparent information on what is driving health care costs; and to help ensure that, over time, the nation is able to get greater value from its health spending. The database includes 5,000 hospitals and more than 1 million different medical service providers from commercial health plans operated by Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealthcare.

HHS' Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) launched the Health System Measurement Project, which brings together trend data on a limited set of key health system measures from multiple data sources to provide a picture of the status of the U.S. health system. The Project focuses on ten critical dimensions of our health care system covering the availability, quality, and cost of care, the overall health of Americans, and the dynamism of the system. The Project examines the evolution of these aspects of our system over time. It also assesses the status of these dimensions of the system with respect to subgroups of the population, with a particular emphasis on vulnerable populations.

In addition, a new website from The George Washington University, Health Information and the Law, is designed to serve as a practical online resource to federal and state laws governing access, use, release, and publication of health information. Constantly updated, the site addresses the current legal and regulatory framework of health information law and changes in the legal and policy landscape impacting health information law and its implementation with commentary and key documents. The site offers descriptions and links to individual federal and state statutes, is searchable on topics such as ‘antitrust,’ ‘confidentiality,’ ‘privacy,’ ‘quality,’ and ‘security of information,’ and provides timely analyses of key health information law issues. It also allows users to see and understand the application of the law in their own geographic areas and how state law intersects with federal requirements and programs.