About the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council
PHC4 is an independent council aimed at addressing the rapidly growing cost of health care.
What We Do
PHC4 was formed under Pennsylvania statue, Act 89 of 1986, as amended by Act 15 of 2020. Under this act, we have two primary responsibilities:
- We collect, analyze, and make public data about the cost and quality of health care in Pennsylvania
- We review and make recommendations about proposed or existing mandated health insurance benefits upon request of the legislative or executive branches of the Commonwealth
Our Strategy
Our goal is to help increase competition in the health care market to contain costs for you. We do this by:
- Comparing information about the most efficient and effective health care providers and sharing our findings with consumers
- Giving this information to health care providers so they can find ways to contain costs and improve the quality of care they deliver
Our Data
We collect inpatient hospital discharge and ambulatory/outpatient procedure records from hospitals and freestanding ambulatory surgery centers in Pennsylvania. This data, which includes hospital charge and treatment information as well as other financial data, is collected on a quarterly basis.
Once we have this data, we compile it into free public reports that can be found on our website. Since our creation, we’ve published hundreds of public reports about health care in Pennsylvania.
We’ve also produced hundreds of customized reports and datasets through our Special Requests division for a wide variety of users, including hospitals, policy-makers, researchers, physicians, insurers, and other group purchasers.
Our Funding
We’re funded through the Pennsylvania state budget. We also receive revenue through the sale of our data to health care stakeholders around the state, the nation, and the world.
