FAIR Health Makes Available Claims Data from Over 120 Million Covered Lives to Industry, Consumers, and Soon to Researchers
Two-Year Anniversary Provides Opportunity to Reflect and Look Ahead to Fulfilling Research Mandate
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- FAIR Health, an independent not-for-profit organization, is bringing unprecedented transparency to the health insurance market. Now marking its two-year anniversary, FAIR Health has already made an indelible mark on information transparency by making its massive, national database of billions of healthcare claims available to a wide range of audiences across the country.
FAIR Health was founded in 2009 in order to provide an independent, national charge database that health insurers could use to help calculate reimbursement to patients who receive care from providers outside their health plans’ networks. The organization’s data repository, covering the period 2002 to the present, contains records for 12 billion de-identified, private healthcare procedures representing over 120 million covered lives nationwide. It constitutes the largest such data resource in the country that is owned and overseen by an independent, not-for-profit organization. The FAIR Health data is further supplemented by a comprehensive set of inpatient and outpatient claims from the Federal Medicare program.
Robin Gelburd, President of FAIR Health, said, “As we reach our two-year anniversary, I am proud to say we have succeeded in what many believed to be impossible in such a short timeframe: developing a set of data products to meet the needs of the insurance industry and launching a free consumer website to help patients plan their medical and dental expenses. We are now poised to tackle the third pillar of our mandate: to make our rich dataset available to researchers and policymakers seeking to understand patterns and trends in service utilization and healthcare spending.”
With over 400 commercial customers now licensing its data and thousands of consumers using the free cost look-up tool available at www.fairhealthconsumer.org, FAIR Health is helping to improve the healthcare landscape by removing the black box that has historically surrounded cost information.
The organization has tasked its preeminent Scientific Advisory Board -- a group comprised of nationally recognized thought leaders in health economics and clinical research -- to develop the framework for a flexible, user-friendly research platform that will offer access to a standard set of data elements from the FAIR Health database as well as custom analytics that respond to individual research needs. The research program will also benefit from the input of the Upstate Health Research Network, a research consortium based at Syracuse University that has been studying the FAIR Health database since its inception. It is anticipated that the platform will be launched in early 2012.
“Reliable, robust data should be at the foundation of any healthcare decision, whether made by insurers, government officials, or individual patients,” said John Wallis Rowe, MD, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and FAIR Health Board member. “FAIR Health’s independence and objectivity give its data unique value for researchers and policymakers looking to improve health outcomes and increase return on our investments in health.”
“FAIR Health’s data have been developed with the highest degree of statistical integrity, and are subjected to multiple levels of independent review,” said Michael E. Chernew, Professor of Health Care Policy at the Harvard Medical School and FAIR Health Scientific Advisory Board member. “Armed with such high quality data, researchers will have new fuel for a broad array of research topics including inefficiencies in the distribution of healthcare resources, the effectiveness of various health interventions, and disparities in care and disease outcomes.”
Questions and comments are welcomed by contacting FAIR Health at 212-370-0704 or by visiting www.fairhealthus.org or www.fairhealthconsumer.org.
Media Contacts:
FAIR Health
Ashley Smyth, 212-370-0704
[email protected]
or
Rubenstein Communications for FAIR Health
Erik Hendrickson, 212-843-8098
[email protected]
CONTACT:
Media:
FAIR Health
Ashley Smyth, 212-370-0704
[email protected]
or
Rubenstein Communications for FAIR Health
Erik Hendrickson, 212-843-8098
[email protected]
KEYWORDS: United States North America New York
INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Health Other Health Professional Services Insurance Research Science General Health Managed Care
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