BCBS Health Index

The BCBS Health Index is informed by de-identified data from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Axis^®, the powerful BCBS national data repository. It is also a result of collaboration with Blue Health Intelligence^®, which provided analytical support, and consultation with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent global health research center at the University of Washington in Seattle, that helped BCBS define condition categories and measure their disabling affects.

The BCBS Health Index is derived from the claims data of more than 43 million BCBS commercially insured members per year, with all identifying information removed. There are plans to integrate data from Medicare and other government programs over time as we continue to advance this new health measurement. Despite its focus on the commercially insured population, the BCBS Health Index results serve as a compelling proxy measure of a state or county’s population health more broadly.

The BCBS Health Index has two key defining factors: 1) It is derived from actual healthcare experiences (i.e., medical and pharmacy claims) that are unique to individuals rather than general population statistics and self-reported survey data; 2) It considers more than 390 health condition categories affecting Americans. The BCBS Health Index brings a unique contribution to other available health data by further informing where to focus efforts and resources to improve the overall health of America.

A Health Index score is calculated for each of the >40M BCBS commercially insured members based on an estimated reduction in lifespan and presence of any of the 390 health conditions captured in the claims data. The individual Health Index scores are aggregated to create one score that represents the average health of Americans across the U.S. This score can be viewed at a variety of geographic and demographic levels.