The Health & Human Services Department (HHS) awarded a $1 million contract to Avalere Health LLC to conduct a design study for a universal database of claims records from all healthcare payor organizations, which will enable better analysis of healthcare trends and treatments.
A number of databases exist with long-term patient information that can support analysis, but each has limitations, HHS said in a Jan. 21 announcement on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Integrated Data Repository (IDR), Chronic Conditions Warehouse (CCW), and Medicaid claims files (MAX) databases include data only on the Medicare and Medicaid populations. In addition, state-based all-payor, all-claims databases are limited geographically in scope and by variations in design across states.
Also, although private databases include information on a more demographically diverse population, they are still fragmented and often inaccessible to researchers because of cost.
The new database would broaden the data field against which to conduct comparative effectiveness research.
"An all-payor, all-claims database would allow for greater power in analysis, ensuring that the data infrastructure that [HHS] secretary supports will be able to produce robust analysis," HHS said in the notice.
If developed well, the database would provide a representative sample of the population and could be built over time, it added.
Avalere, a consulting company for healthcare business strategy and policy, will analyze the services and technical mechanisms needed to establish the database and to support the transition to a pilot of the database, according to the notice. The contract will last for one year.
