Analyses of Employer Medical Claims Data to Assess Receipt of High-Priority Preventive Health Services

The Affordable Care Act mandated that health plans cover preventive health services without patient cost sharing. A process, based on the analyses of medical claims data, is presented that allows companies to assess whether their healthcare plans are providing employees and dependents with age- and sex-appropriate high-priority preventive healthcare services.

High-priority preventive healthcare services are defined as, a physical examination; type 2 diabetes screening; blood lipid screening; cervical, breast, and colon cancer screening; and osteoporosis screening. Current Procedural Terminology codes reflecting billing for these screening services were identified. Receipt of these age- and sex-appropriate services in rolling 3-year windows from 2010 to 2016 was assessed in 86,895,424 person-years of medical claims data from the IBM Watson Health MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters Database and the Medicare Supplemental and Coordination of Benefit Database. Data were analyzed in 2018 and 2019.

In the 2014-2016 period, 29% of men and 36% of women received the complete set of age- and sex-appropriate preventive health services, whereas 33% of men and 13% of women received none of these services.

Only a minority of individuals received a complete set of the defined high-priority preventive healthcare services. The process presented here allows employers to routinely analyze their medical claims data to assess the performance of their health and wellness plans in delivering these preventive services. The strengths and weaknesses of this approach are also described.