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The Colorado APCD website goes live November 1st, 2012, and will allow us for the first time to start evaluating the big drivers affecting health care cost and utilization in our state. To celebrate this important milestone, CIVHC is hosting a launch event at The Colorado Trust from 10-11:30am. Please join us and other health care leaders in the state as we share some of the early data and findings in the APCD and demonstrate how to use the interactive website to search the health data of interest to you.

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By Lalit Bajaj, M.D., M.P.H., and Nathan Wilkes - APCD Advisory Committee Members

Featured in Denver Post, Guest Commentary 4/27/12

We've all heard the old adage you can't manage what you don't measure. The same is true for health care. In Colorado and across the nation, costs for health care services continue spiraling out of control, gobbling up higher percentages of our wages while taking away from resources that could improve our schools and infrastructure.

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Striving for improved value just might be the one goal that unites all parties in the health care system. But it will take a coordinated effort from key stakeholders across the system to bring about change.

Philip B. Kalin, president and CEO of the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC), will facilitate a panel discussion, "An Imperative Taking Shape: Rewarding Value in Health Care," at the 2011 Colorado Health Symposium.

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by Ned Calonge, MD, originally published in Health Policy Solutions November 2, 2012

This week we saw the first presentation of the Colorado All Payer Claims Database, a project of the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC) that is jointly funded by the Colorado Health Foundation and The Colorado Trust.

We at The Trust believe that the claims and costs data collected through the APCD, as well as specific measures of quality, will provide an essential missing part of the spectrum of data needed to inform health care decisions by business leaders, policymakers, providers, payers and, of course, health care consumers.

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The spirit of innovation is alive and well in Colorado health care. And, even as providers, patient advocates and health plans respond to local needs, they’re identifying many of the same problems. Even more striking: they agree that the changes they need to make to improve health, improve care and control costs can’t be done without radically transforming the way we pay for health care.

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Developing an information resource as complex as the Colorado All Payer Claims Database is a difficult and challenging undertaking. Although sophisticated technology is available, creating a functional database from complex claims information submitted by multiple payers and spanning several years is no easy task. The reality is that even the large and well established health payers face challenges in synthesizing and making sense of their own claims data.

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Last Thursday, November 1, marked a big milestone for health care in our state with the launch of Colorado’s All Payer Claims Database. As the appointed administrator of the APCD, CIVHC is honored to serve as the steward for this unique Colorado resource. We were thrilled by the crowd of more than 200 health care leaders and stakeholders that gathered at The Colorado Trust. Enthusiasm in the room was palpable as participants saw the APCD in action for the first time. Multiple policy wonks admitted that their post-event work plans were “shot” because they planned on spending the afternoon pouring through the APCD site to see what information they could glean. This initial version of the APCD is designed to stimulate important policy discussions towards the goal of better health, better care and lower costs.

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