Wisconsin Group Leads The Way on Efficiency Data

Insuring Resources Commentary:

This is how Wisconsin can lead the way to show how efficient health care can be delivered. Health care reform must include incentives to providers to share their costs and quality outcomes to drive competition to more cost effective and quality care.

The WHIO Health Analytics Exchange announced today the launch of a database to assess health care quality, costs.

For more information visit WHIP at http://www.wisconsinhealthinfo.org/


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from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Nov. 16, 2009 3:10 p.m. |
A 4-year-old collaborative effort to collect data from Wisconsin's insurers, hospitals, major employers and others has launched a database that can be used to analyze health systems' performance.

The WHIO Health Analytics Exchange contains information from millions of insurance claims and is being used by large medical groups, state government, business groups and other members of the Wisconsin Health Information Organization, said Julie Bartels, the organization's executive director.

The database shows, for example, that treatment for congestive heart failure in the Fox Valley and Madison costs significantly less than the statewide average, meaning those areas are much more efficient at caring for that disease, Bartels said.

Treatment for congestive heart failure costs slightly more in the Milwaukee area than the statewide average, the data show.

"The breadth of information in our repository is astounding," said Bartels, who will discuss Wisconsin's experience building the database Tuesday at an American Health Insurance Plans conference in Chicago.

"To us, the real opportunity is to look across all the claims aggregated here and get a picture of where we have cost-effective health care being delivered in Wisconsin, and where we have an opportunity to improve the cost-effectiveness of health care," said Karen Timberlake, secretary of the state Department of Health Services and a WHIO board member.

It's difficult to see trends when comparing a few heart attack treatments. But when you can look at thousands of procedures around the state, "it's really powerful," Timberlake said. "You start to see there are real differences in the way medicine is practiced."

That kind of information will help medical providers improve their care, said John Toussaint, president and chief executive of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value in Appleton. If a provider discovers it is expensive or less efficient in a certain area, it "can either say, 'I'm going to put resources into this, or maybe not do it anymore,' " Toussaint said.

Ten founding members contributed $3 million to WHIO to develop the database, and six more fee-paying members have joined. The state contributed $1.55 million.

WHIO has given a three-year, $4.5 million contract to Ingenix, a health care information and research company, to manage the data warehouse and analyze the information. Ingenix is part of UnitedHealth Group Inc.

"We all know there is waste going on in health care, and it contributes to higher health care premiums," Timberlake said. "This is one way we in Wisconsin can work to hold down the cost."