By Tim Mastro

The Delaware Department of Health and Social Services launched a new version of its CostAware website last week.

The department said the update was designed to help individuals understand how their health care dollars are spent by comparing the variation of average costs for different episodes of care and medical services based on actual claims in Delaware.

In early 2020, DHSS and the Delaware Health Care Commission began working with the Delaware Health Information Network to develop and implement various cost and quality analyses. These surveys leverage data in the Delaware Health Care Claims Database, established through legislation passed by the General Assembly in 2016. DHIN manages the claims database, and Health and Human Services uses it to support a variety of policy initiatives.

The initial version of CostAware, launched in April 2022, compared prices for several common care scenarios at six unnamed hospital systems: cardiac procedures, cesarean section births, emergency department visits, knee and hip replacements, and vaginal deliveries. The costs across five accountable care organizations are also compared for seven common services: blood counts, colonoscopies, doctor visits, hemoglobin A1C tests, head CT scans, lumbar spine MRIs and screening mammographies.

In addition to the above data, the upgraded version of CostAware includes:

• Average cost estimates for episodes of care reported for named Delaware hospitals.
• Estimates of the average cost per visit for additional services, including child wellness visits, mental and behavioral/health assistance, diabetes care, cardiac investigations and procedures, doctor visits by complexity, and lab tests (blood and urine).
• Results reported by type of care setting (e.g., hospital outpatient facility, outpatient lab, professional office, urgent care facility and telehealth) to facilitate additional comparisons.
• Additional years of data, with 2020 and 2021 added to the 2019 numbers used for CostAware 1.0.
• Trend visualizations, with multiple years of data, showing changes over time in average cost, quality and other measures.
• Improved filtering of results by insurance category (commercial, Medicaid, Medicare Advantage) and patient age range and gender (as appropriate).

“Since its launch last year, CostAware has served as a valuable tool in highlighting the variation in the cost, utilization and quality of health care in Delaware,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Molly Magarik, who is also a member of the Delaware Health Care Commission. “We are excited for these additional data enhancements, as they add yet another layer of transparency and awareness around the health care dollars that are spent by Delawareans and their insurers.”

CostAware also includes quality measures, including readmission and utilization rates, as well as patient satisfaction scores, all from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as part of its Hospital Compare and Medicare Shared Savings programs. Each episode of care and service can be filtered further by type of insurance: commercial, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid.

CostAware can be found at costaware.dhss.delaware.gov.