Vericred Provides Exclusive Provider-Network and Formulary Datasets to Healthcare Researchers

Managed Care Weekly Digest

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- - Vericred, a healthcare data services company, announced that it will provide qualified non-commercial researchers across the country access to new high-value health insurance datasets, at no cost, with the goal of enabling analysis and insights into the health insurance market. This work was made possible with support from the HYPERLINK "http://www.rwjf.org/" nRobert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) (see also Vericred).

The newly available datasets are comprised of Vericred's proprietary HYPERLINK "https://vericred.com/data-solutions/provider-network/" nprovider-network and HYPERLINK "https://vericred.com/data-solutions/formulary/" nformulary data. These data will be available in addition to the previously available HYPERLINK "http://www.rwjf.org/en/library/collections/hix-compare.html" nHIX Compare data, provided by RWJF. Vericred's provider-network data represents hundreds of millions of plan-provider relationships with details on which doctors and facilities participate in specific networks, bringing transparency to the network component. The formulary dataset provides information on which drugs are covered by which plans in addition to their tier level and restrictions.

"The network and formulary datasets add important depth to what is currently available to researchers, providing endless potential for analysis and new understanding of how the health insurance market is evolving," said Katherine Hempstead, senior adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"Vericred shares the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's goal of increased transparency across all sectors of healthcare," explains Michael Levin, Vericred's co-founder and CEO. "These datasets will enable researchers to investigate aspects of health insurance that would otherwise be impractical if not impossible to do. We look forward to seeing research results that come from this initiative."

Many analysts have already used these data, including government agencies, academic researchers, and analysts from the private sector. Just recently, University of Pennsylvania's Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics HYPERLINK "http://ldi.upenn.edu/brief/trends-physician-networks-marketplace-2016" nperformed a study using Vericred's network data to analyze the "narrowness" of regional provider-networks. The study provided invaluable insights into geographic shifts toward narrow networks, something that might not have been possible without the data. Through this initiative, however, RWJF and Vericred hope to introduce these data resources to a wider community of researchers.