Gov. Jack Markell signed Senate Bill 238, which establishes the Delaware Health Care Claims Database.
Sponsored by Sen. Bethany Hall Long (D-Middletown) and Rep. Melanie George Smith (D-Bear, Newark), the bill creates a central location within the Delaware Health Information Network (the DHIN, which already holds statewide clinical health data) for health care claims data.
The information will be used to support population health improvement initiatives as well as the state’s ongoing efforts to move towards a value-based payment system. The database will assist the state in making more informed health care purchasing decisions and control long-term health care costs without compromising the quality of care available to state employees and Medicaid recipients, a release stated.
Delaware’s public and private employers have struggled with high health care costs. Delawareans pay an average of 25 percent more for health care than the national average, and health care costs continue to grow substantially as a portion of the state budget.
“By increasing transparency in health care prices, we take another important step toward in our efforts to transform Delaware’s health care system,” said Markell. “We must do everything we can to encourage innovation among providers, keep moving toward a more flexible system that pays for the quality rather than quantity of care, and give patients the ability to make more informed health care decisions. Ongoing investments in technology and data that are critical to achieving our goals.”
The database compliments the State Health Care Innovation Plan, an initiative spearheaded by Markell and the Delaware Center for Health Innovation, a public-private partnership that includes stakeholders throughout the health care system, who have worked together over the past few years to improve patient care, support the health of all Delawareans, and reduce the costs of care, the release stated.
“Business leaders have come to understand the key to improving performance is harnessing the capacity of information technology to aggregate and analyze data. This database will allow us to figure out why some providers get better results and why some providers create more costs without better results to show for it. We will be in a position to reward what works and change what doesn’t,” Markell noted in his State of the State speech earlier this year.
The legislation requires that the information be maintained in a secure, encrypted setting in compliance with all federal and state health care privacy and data security laws.
