On the Road to Price Transparency with APCDs

APCDs are large-scale databases with continuously aggregated information on medical, dental, and pharmacy claims as well as eligibility and provider files across all care settings, reported directly by insurers. APCDs can also comprise information on actual transaction prices, patient payments, and health plan payments.

APCDs hold great potential to introduce price transparency to healthcare because they allow for an unbiased and multifaceted picture of current healthcare costs, price variation, care quality, and utilization aspects.

Still, there’s plenty of work to be done to achieve nation-wide results. First, the majority of states need to enable APCDs or APCD-like data storage. Then, there also should be a standard procedure for providers to report on procedure- and patient-specific pricing since it can be a massive administrative burden, and there’s currently no one-size-fits-all solution for this process.