As states grow increasingly concerned with rising health care costs, establishing health care cost growth benchmarking programs can provide a structure and process for increasing health system transparency and developing strategies for containing costs.

At least eight states have adopted benchmarking programs that bring stakeholders together to set cost growth targets for health care spending, collect data from payers to measure health system performance and identify where policy or program action may be required.

In a new white paper prepared for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Manatt Health discusses the history of cost growth benchmarking programs; their common core features; and emerging use cases, including driving primary care investments, identifying trends in patient cost sharing, and advancing alternative payment methods (APMs), before highlighting several opportunities for standardization as more states move to adopt similar programs. The white paper also offers insight into how increased cross-state coordination and program standardization could further advance the growth and utility of benchmarking programs, and looks forward to anticipate the complex questions that benchmarking programs may help answer as they increasingly become the centerpiece of state efforts to understand and address health care cost growth trends.

To read the full white paper, click here.