New Brief on Data Collection and Use in Health Insurance Exchanges

This brief, written by Taylor Burke, Lara Cartwright-Smith, and Sara Rosenbaum, discusses the new health insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act and associated structural and process-related regulations that aim to ensure the quality and value of plans sold. To qualify to be sold in these marketplaces, new plans must be certified as a "Qualified Health Plan" (QHP), meet quality accreditation standards, and implement a quality improvement strategy. These steps require the collection of information from insurers, which will result in the disclosure of information about health insurance policies, practices, cost, and quality. Learn more about QHP certification and accreditation and the impact these processes will have on the public availability of health plan performance data in this article by clicking here.