Annual Reports
HCCI’s Health Care Cost and Utilization Reports

The CDC defines Severe Maternal Morbidity (SMM) as 'unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term consequences to a woman's health.' These outcomes are largely preventable and are an important indicator of maternal health care quality. The CDC reports that SMM has steadily increased in recent years, and the consequences are wide-ranging, including detrime...

Health care spending continues to grow, and prices are the primary driver. Without addressing high and growing prices, efforts to make care more affordable will not be successful. One way to understand what is going on with prices in employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) is to compare negotiated rates paid in that market to Medicare payments for the same services. New analysis from the Heal...

The World Health Organization reported that, following the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide. Mental health crises following months and years of social isolation and other effects of the pandemic have renewed national interest in mental health care access. Understanding how mental health services, including medications used to treat m...

Building on existing work on telehealth use early in the COVID-19 pandemic among people who get health insurance through work, HCCI examined the use of telehealth services by year through 2021. We examined patterns of telehealth use by modality (synchronous or asynchronous) and state, as well as select measures of area (zip or county)-level social determinants of health as reported in AHRQ's Socia...

The emergency room (ER) is a critical and life-saving source of care for many Americans, but the resulting medical bills that patients receive can be a source of confusion and extreme financial burden. From incredibly high, varying prices to surprise bills resulting from in/out of network confusion, many Americans have no idea what to expect when it comes to the cost of ER services. Poli...