SAS Unveils Claims Analytics for APCD
Health care reform will only succeed when government, employers and consumers can compare quality and costs. Unfortunately, few systems efficiently analyze data across payers and disparate data sets. Business analytics leader SAS has developed software to help. SAS Claims Analytics for APCD (all-payer claims database) provides reliable, comparative information from vast amounts of claims data. With SAS, state agencies, policymakers, payers, providers – and ultimately consumers – can reduce costs and improve quality by being better informed.
The New Hampshire Institute of Health Policy and Practice (NHIHPP) at the University of New Hampshire sought a solution that would allow for data visualization for its analyses of geographic and regional costs and quality to support accountable care development.
“The ability to quickly explore health data will greatly improve health care policy decision making,” said Josephine Porter, MPH, Deputy Director, NHIHPP. “Our partner sites statewide will soon be able to easily access and visually display population, cost and utilization data. This will enable our project partners to interpret and discuss results much more effectively. This system also advances transparency by letting the public view analyses at state and regional levels.”
The new health insurance exchanges create an even greater need for quick answers to questions such as, “How much does an MRI or hip replacement cost in each county?” Or, “Are there enough primary care physicians to meet the needs of each county?” To meet these new demands for information, state governments are developing APCDs – statewide repositories of medical, dental and pharmacy claims from public and private health care payers.
SAS Claims Analytics for APCD sheds light on the cost, quality and accessibility of health care services and helps states understand and identify variation across plans and providers. It creates a data warehouse capable of storing the increasing number of health care claims and other clinical data. Users can dig into that data using SAS Visual Analytics – a highly visual, in-memory tool for exploring any amount of data very quickly. SAS lets users explore all data, execute analytic correlations on billions of rows of data in just minutes or seconds, and present results via the Web or iPad and Android tablets. Patterns, trends and relationships in data quickly become apparent when graphically displayed.
“State governments and policymakers are realizing the benefit of harnessing big data to improve collaboration and transparency,” said Dr. Graham Hughes, chief medical officer for SAS. “Building price transparency into a state’s health care system requires an APCD that can withstand the rigors of big data. With reliable access to comparative information on cost and quality, policymakers are better informed and consumers have the power to choose – reducing health care costs and improving quality of care.”
