State Health Policy and Big Data: The Fund at the Health Datapalooza Conference

Put “palooza” at the end of “data”—and you get a sense of overflowing information and potential. That is the concept behind the Health Datapalooza conference, an opportunity to focus on accelerating the use of data to improve health. Hosted by AcademyHealth, the seventh annual conference was held in Washington, DC, in early May. The Milbank Memorial Fund, one of the event sponsors, organized sessions and sent officials from several states to attend the event.

Since its inception, the conference—which has been supported by several US Health and Human Services agencies—has attracted a diverse range of health care stakeholders, including technology and pharmaceutical companies, foundations, academic institutions, and consumer organizations. “The driving insight for the conference is the idea that there is a lot of health care data being generated, much of it by the federal government,” says Christopher Koller, president of the Milbank Memorial Fund. “How can we use it to improve the health of populations, improve patients’ experiences of care, and lower costs?”

“Some of the key strategies highlighted at the meeting,” explains Rachel Block, a project coordinator at the Fund, “included making large public health care data sources more accessible, promoting new technologies and tools that make these data more useful for policy and real-time health care delivery, and directing public and private investment to innovative solutions designed to meet emerging public needs, such as chronic disease management.”

Through its sponsorship, the Fund had the opportunity to spotlight the intersection of state health policy and “big data” as part of the conference program. The Fund also offered scholarships to attend the conference to 10 state leaders, who represented a cross-section of Fund projects and the Reforming States Group. In addition, the Fund also provided subject matter expertise for two state-focused panels.

One session featured three states participating in Fund projects on Total Cost of Care and Primary Care Transformation. Speakers included:

• Aron Boros, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Center for Health Information Analysis described the Commonwealth’s approach to collecting, analyzing, and publishing data about total health care expenditures
• David Mancuso, Director of Research and Evaluation, Washington State Department of Health and Social Services, explained his model for creating “big data” capabilities by integrating data across multiple health, social, and other programs to inform program design and evaluation
• Richard Shonk, Medical Director for the Health Collaborative in Ohio, assessed their approach to analyzing and reporting data to physician practices and the payers participating in the Comprehensive Primary Care Program.

The other Fund-sponsored session highlighted state-level health care transformation activities that focused on Medicare and dual eligible (Medicare and Medicaid) beneficiaries. Illinois’ Medicaid agency has implemented a managed care program specifically targeting the dual eligible population; by combining Medicare and Medicaid data at the state level, they are shaping state policy, partnering with health plans to improve beneficiary service and monitoring the program’s outcomes. In New Hampshire, the Medicaid agency has developed a comprehensive, easy-to-use quality information system to profile populations and providers on key metrics; they are in the process of adding Medicare data to this system with technical assistance from the CMS Innovation Accelerator Program. The Oregon Health Care Quality Corporation is a private sector organization that was designated as one of the first “Medicare qualified entities” to receive and use Medicare data in order to publish comparative provider performance information.

“The gap between the potential and the reality of health care data deployment for state governments can be huge,” says Koller. “Health Datapalooza helps close it. We are pleased that the Fund could both show how states are using health care data to achieve public goals on specific projects and give a group of hard-working state officials the opportunity to learn and connect.”