Inform the Public Debate About the Causes and Consequences of Healthcare Costs and Cost Growth at the State Level

North Carolina provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate a role states can play in tackling health care costs because of the availability of a new data resource across the three participating institutions — Duke for Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, and the Health Care Cost Institute — that will enable the creation of a near universal claims database for the state, as well as public and private sector leaders who are poised and motivated to make significant changes in how care is paid for in the state. The project will start with a Scientific Advisory Board. The study design will then be converted by teams at Duke, BCBSNC, and HCCI into a detailed statistical analysis plan that will facilitate comparative analyses of the multipayer claims data that will result in a unified quantitative analysis that can illustrate service utilization and price changes over time in the state across payers.