Jacqueline Martin, Associated Press
On Monday, June 26, 2023, David White was charged a hefty additional fee after undergoing kidney surgery. He sits for a portrait at his home in Temple Hills, Maryland, with a portion of his medical expenses in hand.
SALT LAKE CITY — As rising health care costs push Utah families further into the squeeze, a nonprofit organization Thursday released the first statewide study on how to control the factors driving rising health care costs.
Jaime Whistler, executive director of the One Utah Health Collaborative, said in an interview that the first-of-its-kind initiative will allow insurance companies and others to collect data showing where costs are rising and the problems associated with them. He said he supports the statewide effort.
Dr. Sri Bose, co-principal investigator, said health spending is increasing and continues to take up a larger share of state, employer and household budgets.
“The average annual family premium in Utah increased by 35% from 2017 to 2022,” Bose said in a press release. “Meanwhile, average hourly wages will increase by only 25%. For Utah's employers, families, and economy to thrive, we need to measure spending and trends and create a sustainable and affordable health care system.” We need to make it available to everyone.”
In 2022, Governor Spencer Cox launched the One Utah Health Collaborative, a community-based nonprofit organization with the goal of improving Utah's health care trajectory. Last week, the cooperative established a technical advisory group representing more than 95% of its policyholders. Participating insurers include Aetna/CVS Health, Cigna, Molina Healthcare of Utah, Public Employment Health Plans, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah, Select Health, United Healthcare, Utah Medicaid, and University of Utah Health Plans. Masu.
This advisory group is part of the Health Expenditure Task Force and, along with the Community Stakeholder Community Committee, aims to establish a health spending baseline, analyze the state's total health spending, and identify conditions. , decided to begin collecting statewide data. Trends in spending growth.
“We have heads of state from all major payer groups, providers, and communities as part of our board, and after the data is collected, we all work together to paddle in the same direction and needle the needle. ,” Wissler said.
“Not only is it important to understand the rate of growth in health care spending, but in order to change that direction, we also need to understand what is driving costs up at the statewide level,” she added. Ta. “We will evaluate and analyze this and additional data with stakeholders to better achieve our mission of affordable and accessible health care that improves the quality of life for all.” We would like to thank all the support we received and everyone involved in this project. ”
Utah Rep. Norm Thurston (R-Provo), who also serves as executive director of the National Association of Health Data Organizations, spoke at a March meeting about what health data organizations offer on data across the state, according to a press release. He said it is important to collect. For healthcare, “we can benchmark costs and identify hot spots.”
“We are grateful to DHHS and the One Utah Health Collaborative for making sure we are monitoring what is happening in our state,” he said. “Without this comparative analysis, we cannot make changes. We need to bring the data together to tell the full story.”
Wissler said the results are expected to be completed by the end of the year, at which point they will be made available to the public.
For more information, visit uthealthcollaborative.org.
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