On December 18, it was reported that the Department of Health and Human Services announced plans to build a database of claims records from all healthcare payers to strengthen its analysis of healthcare trends and treatment outcomes. This initiative comes from ARRA funding to establish and promote better comparative effectiveness research.

As the healthcare reform bill wends its way through the legislative system, cost control and return on investment/better outcomes are becoming the pivotal topics  One of the challenges of the current healthcare bill is that it does not address directly the considerable process, program, and data and technology fragmentation and disconnects. A reminder that IDC technology spending data indicates that the US healthcare payer market accounts for more than 50% of the total technology spend for the world wide healthcare insurance market.  Healthcare costs are similarly disproportionate, particularly for the outcomes achieved.  Greater collaboration and consistency must happen to reduce the huge expense of technology, process, product and clinical heterogeneity and to improve outcomes.

The ARRA funding and claims database initiative is another among a number of recent government healthcare programs and mandates from those governing and regulatory agencies will provide the impetus for most future collaboration and consistency.  The Department of Health and Human Services in the past year has launched a number of medical home, payment reform and now a collaborative database initiative.  In the next decade, the technology and business investment that healthcare payers and their vendors allocate to meet the increasing demands and mandates of regulatory and government agencies will rise considerably.

This topic will be among those discussed in IDC Health Insights Top 10 Predictions for Healthcare Payers in 2010. Please also join us on Tuesday, January 12 at 2 pm Eastern Time for our annual Healthcare Top 10 Predictions Webcast.