Nov. 17--A 4-year-old collaborative effort to collect data from Wisconsin's insurers, hospitals, major employers and others has launched a database that can be used to analyze health systems' performance.

The WHIO Health Analytics Exchange contains information from millions of insurance claims and is being used by large medical groups, state government, business groups and other members of the Wisconsin Health Information Organization, said Julie Bartels, the organization's executive director.

The database shows, for example, that treatment for congestive heart failure in the Fox Valley and Madison costs significantly less than the statewide average, meaning those areas are much more efficient at caring for that disease, Bartels said.

Treatment for congestive heart failure costs slightly more in the Milwaukee area than the statewide average, the data show.

"The breadth of information in our repository is astounding," said Bartels, who will discuss Wisconsin's experience building the database Tuesday at an American Health Insurance Plans conference in Chicago.

The organization will market the database to large medical systems and employee benefit consulting firms initially, Bartels said. The cost will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

Organizers hope to roll out the database to consumers in 2011 for a yet-to-be-determined fee, she said.

The database will allow consumers to evaluate hospitals and individual practice groups on the basis of cost and quality, she said.

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Greater Milwaukee Business Foundation on Health, Humana, ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value and Wisconsin Hospital Association Inc. are among the members of WHIO.

The database is drawn from the experiences of more than 1.6 million people and 72 million treatment services. In April, WHIO will add data from Dean HMO and Medicaid, which includes BadgerCare, the state health program for the working poor, adding the experiences of 1 million more insured people to the database.

"There isn't a database like this that's been available to providers to measure these sorts of things. And if you can't measure it, you can't improve it," said Larry Rambo, chief executive of Humana's Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois markets.

Wisconsin is among a handful of states -- including Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington -- that have put infrastructures in place for pooling health data to improve quality and transparency, according to a briefing paper written this year by the consulting and actuarial company Milliman.