Health Care Cost Institute Research Database
Problem
The United States spends heavily on health care, but health outcomes lag.
Despite spending nearly twice as much per capita, the United States lags behind its peers in many health care metrics, including life expectancy, disease burden, and health care access. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 required private insurers to disclose detailed annual claims and coverage information. The Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), a nonprofit research institute, makes that data available to researchers, policymakers, and journalists to help them understand the disconnect between health care spending and health care outcomes.
Solution
NORC provides the expertise needed to build and maintain a secure data repository.
HCCI selected the NORC Data Enclave® for its end-to-end secure data hosting, access, and dissemination solution. The Enclave provides a secure platform, which allows authorized users to access the environment remotely, and its powerful tools enable rich search options and data analysis.
With each year’s data release, the ADS project team implements a rigorous process to ingest, validate, clean, and aggregate the data. Our data pipeline then standardizes, enhances, enriches, and aggregates the data. The de-identified output populates two analytically ready views for researchers.
Because timeliness is so important, NORC turns around the data quickly, giving HCCI time to conduct its tests and release the data to the researcher community in the first quarter of every year.
Result
Research has shed light on nearly every aspect of the health care system.
The HCCI Data Enclave has been the backbone of many annual reports from federal agencies, institutions, foundations, and academics, providing policymakers and businesses invaluable insights into national trends in health care spending and underlying cost drivers.
Institutions that have accessed the HCCI Data Enclave include the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Society of Actuaries, and RAND Corporation, and numerous universities and colleges, including Harvard University, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Duke University, University of California-Berkeley, University of California San Diego, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, and The Ohio State University.
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Project Leads
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Jeffrey Leintz
Vice PresidentProgram Director -
Jennifer Smith
Principal Data ScientistPrincipal Data Scientist -
Wen Hu
Senior Data ScientistSenior Data Scientist -
Daniel Krauss
Senior Data ScientistSenior Data Scientist
“We use a variety of technologies to ensure the data aren’t vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, from the safe ingestion, storage, and management of HCCI data files, to the secure environment where researchers can conduct analysis.”
“We make great efforts to implement high quality control of the claims data. Our team recognizes that making rich & secure data available is critical for allowing the HCCI research community to provide important insights on healthcare spending.”
