Cost & Quality Atlas

Mapping opportunities for healthcare improvement

IHA’s California Healthcare Cost & Quality Atlas measures healthcare performance across the state. The publicly available tool looks at clinical quality, hospital utilization, and cost of care metrics by geography for 16 million Californians.

The Atlas gives us a snapshot of where healthcare is performing well and where it’s not. And this visibility can lead to improved care and reduced disparities for Californians.

Measuring healthcare performance

The Atlas includes performance information for:

• Commercial HMOs & PPOs
• Medicare Advantage & Fee-For-Service
• Medi-Cal Managed Care
• Provider risk-sharing arrangements
• Accountable Care Organizations
• Large, small, and self-insured employers
• Individually insured members
• Members with select chronic conditions

 See participating organizations

Uncovering key findings to improve care

Atlas shows us that discrepancies in care persist across different regions of the state, while costs often continue to rise (although by less than national benchmarks).

To help address these and other challenges, the Atlas points to certain key paths for improvement:

• Financial risk sharing. When plans and providers share in the financial risk, better care and lower costs typically result.
• Integrated care models. Across the state, integrated care models, such as HMOs and ACOs, perform better than non-integrated models like PPOs.

Guiding the way to a healthier future

The Atlas makes healthcare improvement possible. Purchasers, providers, health plans, policymakers, regulators, and even consumers use insights from the Atlas to move care forward.

Data from the Atlas helps researchers answer questions about healthcare performance. For example, University of California, Berkeley researchers used the Atlas to assess the potential impact of a public option health plan on increasing competition and lowering health insurance premiums.

Visit the Atlas website to see how healthcare is performing across different regions in California.