Health Care Cost Institute

TRANSPARENCY- The Organization launched the first national, health care price and quality transparency website, Guroo.com. The website displays pricing for shoppable, discretionary, schedulable health services at the national, state, and local levels free of cost to the public. The website is intended for use by health care consumers who are uninsured, in high-deductible health plans, or enrolled in health plans that do not provide pricing information. Data for Guroo.com is based on claims from insurers Aetna, Humana, and United Healthcare. Guroo.com uses actual amounts paid including copay and coinsurance to produce prices and price ranges.

QUALIFIED ENTITY PROGRAM- In 2014 the Organization became the first national Qualified Entity under the Affordable Care Act entitling it to recieve Medicare data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in order to engage in public reporting. The Organization paid for and acquired three years of the Medicare data in 2016 and will commence public reporting in 2017.

REASEARCH-The Organization has signed research agreements with leading universities, actuarial organizations, and government agencies to license access to detailed claims data from over 50 million privately insured Americans for faculty, association and government research studies and PhD dissertations. The licensees have access to large private claims database to conduct health care research projects. All research projects must be non-proprietary and non-commercial and must align with the mission of the Organization.

Hcci pulblishes a "Health Care Cost and utilization report" annually. In addition, they publish issue briefs, and provide reasearch licenses.

The organization maintains a price transparency website called guroo.com which displays pricing for Health services on national, state and local levels free of Cost.

The hcci became the first qualified entity under the aca. They accumulate data from the centers for medicare & medicaid and report pulbicly on the data.

Transparency - in 2015, hcci launched the first national, Health Care price and quality transparency website, guroo.com. The website displays pricing for shoppable, discretionary, schedulable Health services at the national, state, and local levels free of Cost to the public. The website is intended for use by Health Care consumers who are uninsured, in high-deductible Health plans, or enrolled in Health plans that do not provide adequate pricing information. Data for guroo.com is based on hcci's combined claims dataset. Guroo.com uses actual amounts paid including copay and coinsurance to produce costs and Cost ranges. In april 2017, hcci entered into a contract with the state of Florida, agency for Health Care administration to create and maintain their consumer-based price transparency website tool. The Florida specific site was built using the guroo platform. The initial launch occurred in may 2018 based on claims for aetna, humana, and united healthcare. Additional payers have bee

Research: - annual reporting: hcci publishes a Health cae Cost and utilization report annually. The Health Care Cost and utilization report uses an analytic data set of over 55 million people younger than age 65 who are covered by employer-sponsored Health insurance (esi) that is weighted to the national level to track changes in Health Care prices, utilization, and spending trends. - issue briefs: hcci regularly publishes issue briefs on topics of interest. Recent issue briefs have examined: spending on telehealth services among people with medicaid, medicare, and commercial insurance; covid-19 hospitalizations; and the price variation for childbirth across the us. - blog: in november 2017, hcci launched a blog to increase the ways in which findings are shared. The blog is updated frequently and has featured topics such as the price of insulin, er spending and cancer screening. - research licensees: hcci has signed research agreements with leading universities, actuarial organizations

Qualified entity program - in 2014, hcci became the first national qualified entity under the affordable Care act entitling it to receive medicare data from the centers for medicare & medicaid services in order to engage in public reporting. Hcci has paid for and acquired medicare date from 2012 to 2022, for a total of eleven years of data. Hcci released its first public report in january 2019.