Effective CER draws on good data, and lots of it. At The Center, we not only have unique data assets and tools, but access to one of the largest private-sector administrative claims databases. Available for internal and external consulting and analytics, our data assets and services offer:
VERSATILITY
- Expert analysis and data management
- Tools to analyze longitudinal health outcomes for treatment effectiveness
- Services to conduct and manage IRB-approved comparative trials and registries
- CER technical assistance, knowledge transfer, and consulting on methods and policies
- Market-leading data mining tools
- Comprehensive and diverse clinical expertise
- Experience in all major research methodologies
- Proficiency in health services research, econometrics, biostatistics, and actuarial methodologies
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BREADTH
- 70 million unique U.S. lives with eligibility and medical data
- Tens of millions of unique U.S. lives with pharmacy and lab results data
- Commercially linked, Medicare (including Part D), and Medicaid data
- Longitudinal de-identified datasets that "cleanly" span to 2004 and capture medical, drug, behavioral health, eligibility, disability, and workers' compensation data. Subsets of archived data date back to 1998.
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DEPTH
- Linked, person-level socioeconomic data
- Links to cancer registry clinical data
- Diversity in geographic experience across multiple industry types, carrier administrators, and delivery systems
- Traditional medical, drug, behavioral health, and eligibility data
- Disability data (over 1.6 million disability cases: short-term, long-term, and workers' compensation; also supplemented by our investment in Official Disability Guidelines (ODG), which is 50 million cases of data provided by CDC, BLS, NIOSH, and the Work Loss Data Institute)
- Health risk assessment data (currently approximately 400,000 unique respondents), vision claims, and dental claims experience
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Unique Capabilities
The Center leverages the strengths and capabilities of The Lewin Group and OptumInsight to provide rich, insightful comparative effectiveness research that can drive higher quality care.
A national leader in health and human services policy analysis and consulting with a broad, respected record of independent analysis of health care policy, health information technology, evidence-based medicine, health care policy, and more.
Specializing in improving the performance of the health system by providing analytics, technology and consulting services that enable better decisions and results. OptumInsight has access to one of the world’s largest and most robust patient data sets including de-identified, integrated diagnosis, medical, and pharmacy claims data for tens of millions of individuals. OptumInsight is a wholly-owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group.
The combination of these organizations' capabilities and expertise strengthens and enriches The Center's comparative effectiveness research to yield unparalleled insights that can drive higher quality care.
Selected CER Projects
• Multi-Payer Claims Database – Working for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has tasked The Lewin Center in partnership with lead contractor OptumInsight to build and operate a national multi-payer claims database to support CER, using de-identified Medicare, Medicaid, and private payer claims data, as well as other data sources, and to provide access to the database for researchers who seek to improve the public’s health through better care and treatment.
• National CER Inventory -- For ASPE, Lewin is designing and implementing a national, web-based inventory of Federal and non-Federal CER outputs and activities, to provide comprehensive CER information to patients, health care providers, researchers and policy makers.
• National Healthcare Horizon Scanning System -- Lewin is part of a team led by ECRI Institute working for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to create a comprehensive, systematic, transparent process for
identifying, tracking, and monitoring new health care technologies to support resource allocation for patient-centered outcomes research.
• FDA Partnership in Applied Comparative Effectiveness Science (PACES) – The Center is working with a team led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University to enable the Food and Drug Administration to conduct CER and related analyses using various existing FDA data sources. The PACES project will incorporate data from a new clinical trials repository and relevant population health data.
• CER Medicaid Analytic Extracts (MAX) – CMS has engaged The Center through a partnership with Buccaneer Computer Systems and Services (BCSSI), to establish a MAX data warehouse (person-level files on Medicaid eligibility, service use and payment information) and build a data extraction system to enable the performance of CER.
• Geographic Variations in Health Care Spending - For the Institute of Medicine (IOM), Lewin is analyzing Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) claims data provided by CMS as well as administrative claims data from OptumInsight to identify factors that contribute to observed geographic variations in Medicare spending and health care resource use.