Like Providers, Health Policymakers Need Good Data
By Jeanine Draut, The Colorado Trust
The problems with the health care system are many and complex, and for a long time we have been stumbling in the dark without enough data to understand them.
We are lucky to be working on this problem at a time and place where health care data is becoming more available all the time. Data give us windows into worlds we don’t experience firsthand, giving us the power to correct our natural tendency to believe that what we see in front of us is all there is. Providers and insurers now have the ability to collect and analyze data that connects treatments to outcomes in large populations, allowing them to see where the needs and gaps are.
Like providers, health policymakers in Colorado have access to more and better data about the health care system than they’ve ever had before. The All Payer Claims Database is one example. Another important data source is the Colorado Health Access Survey (CHAS).
Colorado is one of a handful of states with a unique household survey that collects information about health coverage, access and use in our state. The CHAS can tell us how many Coloradans have health insurance, what type of insurance they have, whether it is adequate coverage, and how often they switched insurance coverage from public to private. It gives insight into why people lack health insurance. It also helps us to understand how Coloradans use health services, including the barriers they encounter when they seek care. A new fact sheet, Measuring the Progress of Health Reform with the Colorado Health Access Survey, shows how the survey can be used to understand the difference that health reform policies are making.
Data can help us come to a shared understanding of the specific challenges we face with health care coverage, access and use. As we work together to make sense of the health care realities unfolding in our state, we are in a better position to propose adjustments and solutions that work.
Data like those found in the CHAS won’t necessarily lead us to agree on solutions, or guarantee their success. Health policy is complicated. Large, complex problems like health care require us to “dare greatly,” in the words of Theodore Roosevelt. We will have to take risks. But with good data we can take better risks. Smarter risks.
In her May 19 commencement speech at Mount Holyoke College, social justice activist Kavita Ramdas said the world needs “uncommon” people who are “…so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free.”
Are you passionate about your perspective on health reform? Good. We need your fire. Let your passion be the fuel that powers your discipline. Sit with the data. Listen to its secrets, even if what you hear is confusing, strange and unexpected. You may find you have the power to see things you have never seen before.
