HCIA Announces Agreement with California
Workers' Compensation Institute
ACTION ITEMS
HCIA Inc. has announced a two-year agreement with the California Workers' Compensation Institute (CWCI) to create a data warehouse that will contain medical and indemnity claims data from up to two dozen carriers of workers' compensation insurance in California. HCIA will also deliver a suite of Web-based analytic tools to mine the data and study costs, outcomes, and medical and disability management of the workers' compensation population in California. CWCI members initially participating in the data warehouse include AIG, Liberty Mutual, Fireman's Fund, Kemper and Safeco.
"Claims costs in workers' compensation are trending up sharply," said Ed Woodward, President of CWCI. "With HCIA's specialized data management services and CWCI's business and research knowledge, we will be able to provide our member organizations with the appropriate answers to the many questions that are critical to the future of our industry."
The agreement also calls for CWCI and HCIA to explore the market potential to adapt HCIA's physician profiling and fraud and abuse analytic tools for the workers' compensation marketplace. The two organizations are also pursuing alliances to replicate the California data-sharing initiative in other regions of the country that are experiencing rapidly rising medical and indemnity costs related to workers' compensation insurance.
"HCIA believes its data management services and normative databases will be powerful in the workers' compensation marketplace," said George Pillari, HCIA Chairman & CEO. "We have found a great partner in CWCI, an organization that has a history of successful applied research in the California marketplace and that brings tremendous industry insight and credibility," he added.
California is the largest workers' compensation marketplace in the nation, representing more than 20 percent of premiums written nationwide. Trends in this $6 billion marketplace are closely observed by national carriers, because, historically, statutes and policies developed in California have spread rapidly to other states.
CWCI is a consortium of national and regional workers' compensation insurance carriers doing business in California that conduct and communicate research and analysis to improve the operation of the California workers' compensation system.
HCIA collects, manages, and distributes comparative health care information. Its customers deliver, purchase and manufacture health care products and services. Based on a unique combination of comprehensive databases, methodologies, and analytic services, HCIA creates information assets used to manage costs and improve patient care.