This is the seventh annual edition of FH® Healthcare Indicators and FH® Medical Price Index, two measures developed by FAIR Health to provide perspective in a rapidly changing healthcare environment. Drawing on the independent nonprofit’s national database of billions of privately insured healthcare claims—the largest in the country—these two measures apply different approaches to illuminate different aspects of the national healthcare sector, including, among other factors, trends in the place of service and billed charge and allowed amounts for professional services.

State and federal efforts to address surprise billing have increased in recent years. On the federal level, the No Surprises Act (NSA) went into effect on January 1, 2022. To examine recent healthcare trends that may reflect in part the impact of state and federal surprise billing laws, FAIR Health delved into its database of private healthcare claim records, the largest such repository in the nation. The result is this study of in-network and out-of-network utilization and pricing from 2019 to 2023, a period that reaches to the first two years after the NSA took effect. The study focuses on professional services in facility settings, particularly four specialties that have frequently been associated with surprise bills: anesthesia (including certified registered nurse anesthetists), emergency medicine, pathology and radiology. Changes in innetwork percentage of claim lines are analyzed nationally and by region, as well as changes in the ratio of allowed to billed amounts for in-network and out-of-network services, and trends in average billed and allowed amounts.1,2 Among the key findings:

Eating disorders are a diverse group of mental health conditions associated with severe disturbances in eating behaviors. In this white paper, FAIR Health delves into its repository of over 43 billion private healthcare claim records—the largest such database in the nation—to shed new light on eating disorders from 2018 to 2022. The study examines changes in the percentage of claim lines for eating disorders over time at national and regional levels, as well as states, age and gender, places of service, specialties and co-occurring mental health conditions.1 Among the key findings:

Telehealth became a major source of medical care during the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020 to reduce the risk of disease transmission. By providing benefits such as increased convenience and decreased travel time to appointments, telehealth has the potential to reduce traditional barriers to care that have been exacerbated by the pandemic for underserved populations, such as communities of color. However, previous research has left unclear the impact of telehealth on patient results such as number of visits, costs, emergency room (ER) visits and hospitalizations, and how these relate to the racial and ethnic diversity of an area.