In 2007, the Regional All-Payer Healthcare Information Council (RAPHIC) began as a convening organization to bring together several Northeast states that had, or were developing, All-Payer Claims Database (APCD) systems.
The vision for RAPHIC was to support cross-state data harmonization and analytic activities. RAPHIC quickly expanded to include participation from states across the country to a broader set of learning network activities. In 2010, RAPHIC changed its name to the APCD Council to reflect the expanded reach. The APCD Council is a learning collaborative of government, private, non-profit, and academic organizations focused on improving the development and deployment of state-based all payer claims databases (APCDs). The APCD Council is convened and coordinated by the Institute for Health Policy and Practice (IHPP) at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and the National Association of Health Data Organizations (NAHDO).
In the time since the initial meeting in 2007, the APCD Council has helped states across the country with a variety of activities related to APCD development, including:
- Stakeholder meetings
- Legislation review
- Rule development
- Vendor selection
- Analytics support
- Linking states to one another to find common solutions
- Leveraging state resources to achieve common objectives.
The APCD Council is a learning collaborative with a multi-fold purpose:
- To serve in an information sharing capacity for those states who have developed, or are developing, all-payer claims databases.
- To provide technical assistance to states.
- To catalyze states to achieve mutual goals.
Current activities are focused on several themes:
- Harmonizing the data collection and data release rules across the multiple state databases
- Development of a strategy for integrating Medicare data into the all payer databases
- Sharing of reporting applications being developed by individual states
- Policy analysis
- Providing support to other states developing all-payer claims databases