Research Brief | No. 15 | December 2016

Measuring Healthcare Value at the State Level: A Call to Action

Many Americans find it alarmingly difficult to get good value for their healthcare dollar. The United States spends more than any other country on healthcare. Excess healthcare spending crowds out other important purchases and burdens individuals, employers and state and federal  budgets. Getting to better healthcare value is critical to reaching our nation’s goal of broad access to quality healthcare for all.

States are a key system actor likely to be at the forefront of meaningful progress on healthcare cost and value issues. The specific conditions that give rise to high prices, unnecessary services and uneven quality vary tremendously between different geographic areas of the country.

Most states are not equipped to address poor healthcare value on behalf of their residents.  Specifically, the absence of timely and reliable public data limits their ability to identify healthcare cost drivers, poor-quality hot spots and whether or not interventions designed to improve healthcare value are working.

This report is a Call to Action that details the minimum five data domains states should track as part of a broad commitment to better healthcare value for their residents. It describes the key analyses that states should conduct and provides case study examples from NY, MD, CO, MA, VA, FL, WA, VT, CA, OR, MN, PA and ME  showing “proof-of-concept” that this level of analysis can be done and highlighting the valuable insights states can glean from the results.

Click here to download the report.