Annual Reports
HCCI’s Health Care Cost and Utilization Reports

Abstract: There is abundant literature on efforts to reduce opioid prescriptions and misuse, but comparatively little on the treatment provided to people with opioid use disorder (OUD). Using claims data representing 12–15 million nonelderly adults covered through commercial group insurance during the period 2008–17, we explored rates of OUD diagnoses, treatment patterns, and spending. We found th...

In HCCI's publication in Health Affairs, we examined out-of-network spending in the privately insured population.  Abstract:  "While out-of-network or potential "surprise" billing has garnered increasing attention, particularly in emergency department and inpatient settings, few national studies have examined out-of-network care overall or in other settings. We examined out-of-network sp...

In recent analysis, we document extensive variation across states and metropolitan areas in the frequency of out-of-network visits among individuals with health insurance provided by an employer. These differences raise the question of whether individual providers bill out of network at dissimilar rates. To explore whether a small group of providers are responsible for most out-of-network billing,...

HCCI's research on daily deaths during the coronavirus pandemic was featured on CNN.  From the article:  "The number of people dying each day in the United States since early April has been consistently more than 10% higher than in previous years, according to a new report from the Health Care Cost Institute in Washington. The institute connects this rise in daily deaths to the coronavir...

It's been a while since my last broad-based update on HCCI's work. With so much going on in the world, I want to bring you up to speed on the many activities underway at HCCI, including our response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our transition to a new dataset that will incorporate claims from Aetna, Humana and Blue Health Intelligence. Everyone's attention is rightfully focused on COVID-19 right n...