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.

Mar
01

March 2022 HCCI Research Highlights

HCCI's data users and staff use our multi-payer, longitudinal commercial claims dataset to study some of the most pressing issues in the U.S. health care system. Here we highlight some recent research using HCCI data:  The Prices That Commercial Health Insurers and Medicare Pay for Hospitals’ and Physicians’ Services | Congressional Budget Office New CBO research using HCCI data: CBO exa...

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Feb
28

JAMA: Variability in Prices Paid for Hemodialysis by Employer-Sponsored Insurance in the US From 2012 to 2019

Abstract: Recent proposals have sought to limit the amount dialysis clinics charge private payers, but little is known about the prices that private insurers actually pay for dialysis. In this study, we provide novel evidence on dialysis prices based on claims data for a large national sample of private employer-sponsored insurance carriers.

Feb
28

NBER: Do Higher-Priced Hospitals Deliver Higher-Quality Care?

Abstract:  We analyze whether receiving care from higher-priced hospitals leads to lower mortality. We overcome selection issues by using an instrumental variable approach which exploits that ambulance companies are quasi-randomly assigned to transport patients and have strong preferences for certain hospitals. Being admitted to a hospital with two standard deviations higher prices raises spe...

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Feb
28

JAMA Internal Medicine: Association of Physician Management Companies and Private Equity Investment With Commercial Health Care Prices Paid to Anesthesia Practitioners

ABSTRACT Importance Physician management companies (PMCs), often backed by private equity (PE), are increasingly providing staffing and management services to health care facilities, yet little is known of their influence on prices. Objective To study changes in prices paid to practitioners (anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists) before and after an outpatient facility cont...

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Feb
14

Love is Expensive; So is a Trip to the Emergency Room

Valentine's Day – known for romantic candlelit dinners, lavish jewelry, and red roses – is pricey. Indeed, the National Retail Federation's Annual Valentine's Day Spending Survey suggests that an individual spends an average of $175 on these gifts each year. However, data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission shows that the cost of love may be even greater, as more than 300 emergency room vi...

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