Annual Reports
HCCI’s Health Care Cost and Utilization Reports

Yearly reviews of spending, price and utilization trends for commercially-insured Americans. Learn more about our methodology, definitions, and other resources.

Nov
25

Comparing Post-Acute Care Use and First Site of Care Among Medicare Advantage Enrollees and Medicare Fee-for-Service Beneficiaries

Using data from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), we examined trends in inpatient hospital admissions and post-acute care (PAC) utilization among Medicare Advantage (MA) and Fee-for-Service (FFS) beneficiaries. Specifically, we compared how frequently individuals in each group were discharged from the hospital, whether they had evidence o...

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Nov
25

Health Services Research: Comparing Different Methods of Indexing Commercial Health Care Prices

​The methodology for HCCI's Healthy Marketplace Index was published in a Methods Brief for Health Services Research. Abstract Objective: To compare different methods of indexing health care service prices for the commercially insured population across geographic markets.Data Sources: Health Care Cost Institute commercial claims data from 2012 to 2016.Study Design: We compare price i...

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Nov
22

Vox: Her son died after insurers resisted covering drug rehab. Now she's taking them to court.

HCCI data was used in an article about the cost of substance use disorder rehab.   From the article: "Insurers do seem to be paying more for addiction care than they used to. According to the Health Care Cost Institute, commercial insurers spent a little more than $17,000 on the average patient with a substance use disorder in 2017, up from nearly $13,500 in 2008. That's likely due in pa...

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Nov
21

How common is out-of-network billing?

Congress is considering legislation to address "surprise bills", which occur when a person visits an in-network facility, but receives services from a provider that is outside of their insurer's network. Bills in both the House and Senate include provisions to determine a benchmark rate for out-of-network payments based on what in-network providers of the same specialty are paid for delivering sim...

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Nov
19

Health Affairs: Private Equity and Powerful Physician Groups Raise Another Distraction

HCCI data on market concentration was mentioned in a Health Affairs blog post. From the article: "Before we even get into the merits and effects of Congress' fix for surprise billing, it's worth noting that the status quo is bad for networks. Most markets—particularly in urban areas—are highly concentrated, giving providers such as hospitals and specialists a great deal of market power. The Health...

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