The 2017 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report shows that spending per privately insured person grew by 4.2 percent, the second year in a row of spending growth over four percent. Price increases were the primary driver. The report covers the period 2013 through 2017 and includes claims data from four national insurance companies: Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and UnitedH...
Office visits to primary care physicians (PCPs) declined 18 percent from 2012 to 2016 for adults under 65 years old with employer-sponsored health insurance, while office visits to nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) increased 129 percent. Comparing 2012 to 2016, there were 273 fewer office visits per 1,000 insured individuals to primary care physicians over that span, while v...
ABSTRACT: Policies and practices have proliferated to optimize prescribers' use of their states' prescription drug monitoring programs, which are statewide databases of controlled substances dispensed at retail pharmacies. Our study assessed the effectiveness of three such policies: comprehensive legislative mandates to use the program, laws that allow prescribers to delegate its use to offi...
The 2016 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report shows that spending per privately insured person grew by 4.6 percent, faster than in previous years. Price increases were the primary driver. The report covers the period 2012 through 2016 and includes claims data from four national insurance companies: Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and UnitedHealthcare. The data in the report can a...
HCCI recently expanded its reporting on emergency room (ER) spending trends to include the most recent data available (2016). We characterize trends in spending, price, and utilization for the five Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes designed to capture the level of severity and complexity of every ER visit. While average prices for all five ER CPT codes were higher in 2016 than in 2009, th...
ABSTRACT Objective: To compare differences in opioid prescription, health care utilization, and costs among patients with low back pain (LBP) who saw a physical therapist (PT) at the first point of care, at any time during the episode or not at all. Data Sources: Commercial health insurance claims data, 2009–2013. Study Design: Retrospective analyses using two‐stage residual inclusion instru...
ABSTRACT Background: Laparotomy followed by inpatient hospitalization has traditionally been the most common surgical care for hysterectomy. The financial implications of the increased use of laparoscopy and outpatient hysterectomy are unknown. Objectives: The objective of the study was to quantify the increasing use of laparoscopy and outpatient hysterectomy and to describe the financial implicat...
HEALTH AFFAIRS BLOG: "Perhaps nothing illustrates the intractability of America's struggle with health spending more than the recent announcement by Amazon, JP Morgan, and Berkshire Hathaway that they were founding a new entity to address health care costs for their employees. Despite lacking any concrete details this announcement managed to wipe billions of dollars in market capitalization ...
Fewer women are getting hysterectomies in every state across the country. Instead, more patients may be choosing minimally invasive procedures or other alternatives to handle issues like pelvic pain and fibroids over a traditional abdominal hysterectomy, new Michigan Medicine research suggests. The rate of hysterectomies in the U.S. decreased 12 percent between 2010 and 2013, from nearly 4...
By: Carolyn Johnson Americans who get health insurance through their jobs are not using more medical care than they were five years ago, but they are spending more due to soaring medical prices, according to a new report. Health spending for the more than 150 million people who receive insurance through their employers was $5,407 per person in 2016. That is a 4.6 percent increase over 2015, even t...
Past literature has found links between higher opioid use and local economic conditions for people enrolled in public health programs, but there has been little discussion of whether this relationship occurs among the privately insured. Using HCCI claims data and county level income data from the US Census Bureau, we examined how a county's median household income relates to long-term opioid use a...
This data brief reports on outpatient observations stays in the Medicare Advantage population from 2010 through 2014. The results show that the rate of observations stays increased in total as well as following hospitalizations. Download PDF File Here
The 2015 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report shows that spending per privately insured averaged $5,141 in 2015, up $226 from the year before. Key Findings Health care spending averaged $5,141 per individual in 2015, up $226 from the year before. Out-of-pocket spending rose 3.0 percent in 2015, to an average of $813 per capita. Spending on prescription drugs grew faster than spending on ...
This data brief examines the health care use and spending from 2010-2014 for people who are enrolled in consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs), and compares these trends to non-CDHP enrollees. Findings indicate that although fewer total dollars were spent on health care for CDHP enrollees, they had higher per capita out-of-pocket spending on deductibles, copays, and coinsurance. Downloa...
The 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) sought to improve access to mental health and substance use services. The Health Care Cost Institute, Inc. (HCCI) analyzed mental health, substance use, and medical/surgical inpatient per capita spending, utilization, prices, and out-of-pocket payments for individuals younger than age 65 and covered by employer-sponsored health ...
This research brief highlights findings from the Health Care Cost Institute's (HCCI) Children's Health Care Spending Report: 2007—2010. 1 The report tracks changes in expenditure and utilization of health care services for children age 18 and younger, who were covered by employer-sponsored private health insurance (ESI). Download PDF File Here
The 2010 HCCI Health Care Cost and Utilization Report is the first report of its kind to track changes in expenditures and utilization of health care services by those younger than 65 covered by employer sponsored, private health insurance (ESI). This report assesses the levels and changes in prices and utilization (including changes in the mix of services) focusing on 2009 and 2010. This report i...