Peering Behind the Veil: Trends in Types of Contracts Between Private Health Plans and Hospitals

Contracting between private health plans and hospitals has been described as “chaos behind a veil of secrecy.” We develop a novel algorithm that classifies inpatient claims as one of three contract types—discounted charges, fixed rates, or per diems—and apply it to the 2009-2014 Colorado All Payer Claims Database. Of $1.1 billion in classifiable private health plan payments for inpatient care in Colorado, we find that 42.1% were fixed rates,...