Supported by the Commonwealth Fund and Arnold Ventures, HCCI recently collaborated with Duke University and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina to study health care spending in North Carolina. The project included data from Medicare, Medicaid, and the commercially insured, adding up to about 60% of the state’s population.

HCCI tracks drivers of health care spending across 124 U.S. metro areas through the Healthy Marketplace Index (HMI) project. The HMI report presents an interactive exploration of a series of metrics – price, utilization, and hospital market concentration – that help stakeholders evaluate local health care market performance across the country. The HMI also allows for metro-specific interrogations about how local spending is determined by these spending drivers, as well as how they’ve changed over time. All of the data used throughout the HMI are freely available for public download alongside detailed methodology documentation.

Applications for HCCI’s “2.0” commercial claims database are now open. The new dataset is 25% larger than the original HCCI dataset, containing more than 1 billion claims per year for more than 55 million people who receive health care coverage from their employers. Approved research and student teams get access to all available years of the full dataset via a secure data enclave with included analytic software licenses.

Interested researchers should visit HCCI’s newly launched Data Access Hub website (healthcostinstitute.org/data-access-hub), which provides details about the new dataset and will guide them through the application and data access processes. Transparent pricing details are also available on the site.

HCCI’s commercial claims data has been used by CBO, MedPAC, FTC, NBER, and dozens of universities.