Total Cost of Care

Supporting Providers Making Care More Affordable

A better health system will give providers the tools to deliver high quality, lower cost care.

Managing the details is impossible if one can’t see the whole picture. Often, providers do not have a global view of their practice, much less the ability to benchmark themselves to their peers locally and across the nation. Actionable data enables providers and practitioners to make adjustments in treatment patterns that could result in more efficient use of health care resources and spending.

Total Cost of Care Project

In partnership with the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CIVHC is collaborating with six states to establish standard ways of investigating variations in health care costs and resource use.

Through this project, CIVHC provides reports to over 100 Colorado-based adult and pediatric primary care practices that include information on the total cost to treat patients annually and what portion of costs were driven by volume of services vs. prices. The information on price, utilization and total cost is broken down by inpatient, outpatient, professional and pharmacy services to give physician groups a better idea of the types of services driving their results. All results are risk adjusted based on the health status of attributed patients to address the concern that one physician practice may treat a “sicker” group of patients thereby allowing meaningful comparisons of utilization (Resource Use) and total costs.

Recent News

In November 2018, NRHI released a report with the latest findings from the study, indicating that Colorado, once again, has the highest costs and resource use of the states in the analysis. CIVHC also analyzed the new data and determined that Colorado could save over $54 million annually if costs were brought down to the Colorado statewide median. Over $141 million in savings would be realized if total costs were reduced to the multi-state average.