Call for benchmark data
The Health Care Cost Transparency Board (Cost Board) tracks health care spending in Washington. As part of this work, the board sets a spending growth goal for health care providers and insurers to stay under. We call this goal the health care cost growth benchmark—or simply the benchmark.
Every year, we call for spending data to see if Washington state has stayed under our benchmark for that year. This helps us analyze whether the health system has been successful at reining in spending.
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Follow the Cost Board’s work
2026 benchmark data call
The Cost Board begins collecting data from 2023–2024 on February 10. Submissions are due April 10.
2026 resources
Materials for health insurance carriers and state agencies
- Cover letter: Introduces the data call.
- Carrier reporting methodologies: Explains age and sex risk adjustment, pooled variance, and confidence interval of cost growth calculation for carrier reporting.
- Frequently asked questions: Answers FAQ from health insurance carriers and state agencies.
- Data submission template: Instructs submitters on how to organize the benchmark data so that the data submission process can go smoothly.
- Technical manual: Defines terms, explores taxonomy codes, and provides further guidance on requested benchmark information.
Materials for providers
- FAQ for providers: Answers frequently asked questions from providers.
- Provider reporting methodologies: Explains age and sex risk adjustment, pooled variance, and confidence interval of cost growth calculation for provider reporting.
- Provider reporting methodologies sample calculation: Shows a step-by-step example of calculation methods for provider reporting.
How to review old resources
Contact the Cost Board’s data team for resources from previous data calls.
2025 benchmark data call
In the third year of the benchmark data call, the Cost Board collected data from 2022–2023.
- Read the executive summary (2025).
- Read the report: Health care spending in Washington, 2022–2023.
2025 resources
Materials for health insurance carriers and state agencies
- Webinar: Detailed how carriers should have reported data in 2025.
2024 benchmark data call
In the second year of the benchmark data call, the board collected data from 2020–2022. This was the first year that data was measured against the benchmark.
- Read the report: Health care spending growth in Washington, 2019–2022.
2024 resources
- Webinar for carriers: How carriers should have reported data in 2024. Watch the webinar recording (March 5, 2024).
- Webinar for providers: How providers should report data. Watch the webinar recording (June 6, 2024).
2022 benchmark data call
In 2022, the first year of the benchmark data call, the board collected several years of data to establish a baseline. The historic benchmark trends are published in the 2023 report.
- Read the executive summary (2022).
- Read the report: Health care spending growth in Washington, 2017–2019.