May 6, 2019 — DENVER, CO — Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC) and the Colorado All Payer Claims Database (CO APCD) are featured in a collaborative manuscript published in the May 2019 American Journal of Managed Care. CIVHC co-authored the manuscript, titled Producing Comparable Cost and Quality Results from All-Payers Claims Databases, along with the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI), Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) and Comagine Health (formerly HealthInsight) in Oregon and Utah. The study demonstrates the feasibility of assessing health care performance within and across states by using these rich data sources and is part of a larger project to identify the effect of health systems on economic and clinical performance.

“While the CO APCD is uniquely suited to inform health care system opportunities within Colorado, there is so much more we can learn from the data when we’re able to make state by state comparisons,” says Ana English, CIVHC President and CEO. “Each state has unique health care market dynamics, demographics and public policies in place, and having the ability to make meaningful comparisons can help further Colorado’s efforts towards creating a high-value system.”

A key accomplishment of the project was the development of a Uniform Data Structure (UDS) file format that can scale across populations, measures, and research dimensions to provide a consistent method to produce comparable findings across regions.

NRHI, CIVHC, MHQP and Comagine Health (formerly HealthInsight), partnered with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Harvard University in the Comparative Health System Performance Initiative Study funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The work described in this paper is a subset of projects being facilitated through NBER and the Harvard University Center of Excellence.

“Identifying a standard way to evaluate data between states is foundational to being able to learn from each other and make informed decisions at the state level,” states English. “This is just the beginning of many potential analyses that can positively impact the lives of Coloradans.”

The full manuscript can be viewed in the May 2019 issue of American Journal of Managed Care.

This project was supported by grant number U19HS024072 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official view of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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