Dive Brief:
- Three large U.S. health plans and a not-for-profit organization have announced a partnership to create an online portal designed to increase access to health care costs and quality data, Modern Healthcare reports.
- The not-for-profit Health Care Cost Institute is working with Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare to create the online health care cost transparency tool. The tool is expected to launch in 2015.
- The portal will offer aggregated data about health care services' costs and quality from commercial health plans, Medicaid plans and Medicare Advantage plans.
Dive Insight:
According to HCCI Executive Director David Newman, the portal is offering a unique information resource. It will provide "a single source of consistent, transparent health care information based on the most reliable data available, including actual costs, which only insurers currently have," Newman told Modern Healthcare. The question is whether consumers will actually leverage this resource; historically, they don't have a great track record of making use of such data.