DataNERD is a searchable database that contains datasets derived from aggregated commercial medical and pharmacy claims from the Health Care Cost Institute. It contains detailed health care spending, use, and price information that spans over 10 years. With DataNERD, you can filter and sort datasets to answer your research questions. Uncover insights with healthcare spending and utilization data, from prices by service categories to procedure codes, and geographic granularity from the state to the CBSA level. As new datasets are added to the tool, users will gain access automatically.

Any individual or organization looking to harness the power of commercial claims data can use DataNERD. For example, state agencies can benchmark healthcare program performance against a vast dataset covering 50 million commercial lives. Policymakers can discover elusive insights into the root causes of spending variations, prices, and service utilization. Data analysts can leverage comprehensive end-to-end data management, standardized data fields, and robust support for curation and enrichment.

DataNERD contains aggregated, deidentified data only. This allows us to share clean, standardized data without compromising patient privacy. It also makes the data more quickly and easily digestible, without requiring code to parse through the vast amount of claims data.

Although anyone can purchase access to DataNERD, only qualified customers may purchase our unaggregated commercial claims data. To license this data, you must be a researcher affiliated with a university, government agency, or non-profit organization. Learn more about our commercial claims data at our Data Access Hub.

We are an independent, non-profit research institute. Founded in 2011, the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) is a trusted source of clear information that researchers, policymakers and journalists can rely on to explain what is driving health care spending in the US. We recognize that people are at the heart of health care. The best way to identify how we can develop a better performing, more sustainable system of care is to methodically examine current care trends. As the only non-profit, independent research group with the most comprehensive database of commercially insured individuals, paired with access to Medicaid and Medicare data – HCCI is committed to putting health care claims data to work for the benefit of the people behind the figures.

Our commercial claims dataset, which the DataNERD tool is built upon, represents over 50 million people who get their health insurance through their employer (also known as Employer Sponsored Insurance, or ESI).

You can take a look at all the fields included in each dataset along with each variable definition by clicking the ‘View Available Datasets’ button above. Click on the dataset you are interested in for more details.

We’re happy to help you get signed up and orient you to our tool. Please direct any questions to datanerd@healthcostinstitute.org.