Jessica Chang

4% of Health Spending Goes to Primary Care Primary care offers patients a critical connection point to the health care system. With contact, continuity, comprehensiveness, and coordination as its base1, primary care has been shown to improve h...

🩺 New HCCI research on primary care spending in employer-sponsored insurance and Medicare fee-for-service 🩺

📉 Key findings:
-In 2022, approximately 4% of medical spending was on primary care
-Since 2018, the share of primary care spending decreased
-Higher share of PCP spending in rural areas

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I don't know who needs to know this but buying a portable monitor (Costcoooo) has been such a game changer for productivity during work trips #ASHEcon2025

Rural Hospital Closures Led To Increased Prices At Nearby ‘Surviving’ Hospitals, 2012–22 | Health Affairs Journal Rural hospitals in the US have closed at a rapid pace in recent years, raising concerns about decreased access to care and declining competition in rural markets. Because prices paid by commercial health insurance plans are negotiated between hospitals and insurers, hospital closure may give “surviving” hospitals increased leverage to negotiate higher prices. Using commercial claims data, we studied the effect of hospital closure on the prices charged by nearby surviving hospitals. We found that hospital closures during the period 2014–18 led to a 3.6 percent increase in prices at surviving hospitals, driven by larger price increases in the three to four years after closure. Price effects were concentrated among surviving hospitals with market power—hospitals with system affiliations and hospitals operating in less competitive markets. We also found that closed hospitals charged lower prices than nearby hospitals in the preclosure period. Thus, closure eliminated low-price hospital options from rural markets. Overall, our findings suggest that hospital closure can have a meaningful impact on commercial prices. Policies targeting rural hospitals should consider the anticompetitive effects of closure, in addition to devoting continued attention to access to and quality of care.

As US rural hospitals continue to face financial distress and uncertainty, our latest research found that rural hospital closures led to an 3.6% price increase among nearby surviving hospitals. Our results highlight the anticompetitive price spillover in rural hospital markets.

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I bought a couple of them when I was in Japan last year. So ideal for trips!

Post- #ASSA2025 podium presentation: in-n-out

Papers revisions are done! Now time for walk at the beach. Polar opposite view of @mollyjeffery.bsky.social winter walks. Mele Kalikimaka! 🎄

wait for reals?! HCPCS?

👋👋👋 @michalhorny.bsky.social and I are still looking for one more paper for our #ASHEcon2025 panel submission!!! if you have a paper on site neutrality, facility fees, consolidation, state health policy, or anything adjacent, let us know!!

This work would not had been possible without funding by @arnoldventures.bsky.social and shout out to @hkellett.bsky.social as our astute program officer #healthprices #healthcare #healthcarecosts

As US continue to grapple with high costs, our findings raise questions on the paradox of non-profit hospitals & prices. NP hospitals now comprise for more than half of all hospitals due to consolidation. More research is needed on this paradox for policymakers to craft targeted policies
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Are high prices because system-affiliated non-profit hospitals are treating more complex ESI patients during this time period? It does not appear to be the case. If anything, we found that for-profit hospitals, on average, have a slightly higher Case Mix Index (CMI)
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Using HCCI's ESI claims data, we find that inpatient (adjusted) price growth rates are NOT homogeneous. We found that not only are inpatient prices of system-affiliated non-profit hospitals higher but have grown the fastest compared to independent & system-affiliated for-profit hospitals (3/6)

Annual Reports Annual ReportsHealth Care Cost and Utilization Report (HCCUR) HCCI’s annual reports examine year-over-year and 5-year cumulative trends in health care spending ...

Every year, we at HCCI find inpatient prices grew faster than other health care services in the employer-sponsored insured population in our HCCUR report 📈.
One thing that nags me every year (after programming through billions of claims records) is: are inpatient growth rates homogenous?
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Commercial inpatient hospital price growth driven by system affiliation and nonprofit-status hospitals Abstract. As policymakers continue to grapple with rising health care costs and prices, understanding trends and variations in inpatient prices among hospi

🚨NEW PAPER🚨 Seems timely now that bsky has (maybe?) taken off. In our paper newly published at Health Affairs Scholar, we asked the question how have commercial inpatient prices growth rates over the last decade varied by hospital characteristics? Disclaimer: This is N-O-T a causal paper.
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Would love to be added. Thanks so much for pulling this list together.

Please add me. Thanks!

Five years since US first biosimilar market entry, first signs of savings attributed to biosimilars in the employer-sponsored insurance population - HCCI Biologic drugs treat a range of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, retinal diseases, Crohn's disease and many other conditions. Despite accounting for use by ju...

Since the launch of 1st biosimilar in late 2017, faster uptake of biosimilar among 6 drug classes w/ biosim competitors have yielded savings in ESI pop w/ sustained year-to-year lower ESI spending. Policy levers such as clinical interchangeability and recent IRA legis can further facilitate uptake👇👇

Health Care Prices Because health care costs should be available to everyone.

A barrier to transparency is that it assumes the average consumer is super human aware of all ancillary codes for encounters like colonoscopy. We used our ESI claims to provide healthprices.org (formerly Guroo) a searchable tool for total expected costs (ancillary incl) at national & local markets 👇

Annual Reports

⚡New Report⚡: HCCI’s 2022 annual report examines health care spending, use, and prices from 2018-2022 among the ESI population. In 2022, per-person spending among people with ESI averaged more than $6,700.

healthcostinstitute.org/health-care-...

📢ICYMI: my HCCI colleague Tanya presented HCCI findings on cardiac rehab use among TM, MA, ESI, and Medicaid enrollees at Million Hearts collaborative meeting today! Simply put, more room for opportunities in #cardiacrehab use #CRSavesLives

t.co/RivXbMqrNM

boston isn't even that cold (after living in upper midwest)!

are you still looking for a panelist? #iprocrastinatedthisyear

Out for Blood? For Routine Lab Work, the Hospital Billed Her $2,400 - KFF Health News Convenient as it may be, beware of getting your blood drawn at a hospital. The cost could be much higher than at an independent lab, and your insurance might not cover it all.

As a long-time fan of @kffhealthnews.bsky.social Bill of the Month series, it was such a treat to geek out on my favorite topic of all things healthcare prices and billing nuances (literally can only exist in America) #siteneutrality

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Introduction to HCCI - Learn How to Use HCCI Data for yo... Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Introduction to HCCI - Learn How to Use HCCI Data for your Research. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

Come learn about HCCI's giant ESI claims data warehouse (covering 55m ESI lives annually) and how to access it to answer your research questions!!!!

A couple of research questions I have used this data include hospital and admin. Rx prices, rural bypass behavior, and population health care spending

O-M-G that is literally my worst nightmare!!! so sorry! The very same thing happened to me when I flew to Taiwan to visit family earlier this year! But I was just able to casually stroll into a random optical store in Taipei and walked out with my usual contact lenses without any issues. Sigh....

Yess! Great minds think alike!! I definitely earned some street credz with the local lobster fishermen that day 😅

or get on a plane to ruin other people's trips... I figuratively shoot darts through my eyes with my mask on every time

let me know if your 11 year old is interested in buying 1990s era Pokemon cards from this millennial

This is so pretty!

I keep telling you that there should be an econ paper on the Pokemon cards market!! It's fascinating