Chief executive Lewis Dickey is taking an unusual step toward tackling health care costs: He's taking charge of the matter himself.

The head of Atlanta-based radio-station owner Cumulus Media Inc. scours data to learn what drives cost increases. Fed up with his human resources department's inability to halt runaway costs, he personally took over analyzing health care trends for his 3,500 employees.

Most CEOs delegate such tasks. But technology is allowing top managers such as Dickey to get more involved. He uses a software system from WellNet Healthcare in Bethesda, Maryland, that tracks pharmacy claims on a daily basis, helping him size up and manage health care costs. WellNet helped him identify $4.1 million in potential savings for Cumulus. One way to save: using nurses to counsel employees at high risk for health problems in the hopes of reducing hospital visits. WellNet also saved the company $400,000 by negotiating prescription-drug pricing and is identifying ways to save more money by switching employees from branded medicines to cheaper alternatives.

"The more time I spend with it, the amount of inefficiencies become very apparent," Dickey says. "Most of this does not make its way to the C-level. It's handled at human resources. I think that's a big mistake today."

Surging health insurance costs are a challenge for companies big and small. The average family premium for all employer-based health plans is $13,375, up 34 percent from five years ago and up 131 percent from 10 years earlier, according to Kaiser Family Foundation. Another group, Business Roundtable, predicts premiums will rise to almost $30,000 a year a decade from now unless health reform is passed.

As high as health care costs are today, they would be even steeper if companies weren't using data to help develop programs to combat costs, says one industry expert.

"It would be unimaginable to not have this analytic capability," says Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health. "It would be a little like not having financial statements."

Despite the increasing frequency of upward premiums, there are companies that buck the trend. Some even hold their health insurance costs in check, says Michael Miele, president of the Princeton, New Jersey-based Healthcare Analytics division of insurance broker Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

"Almost every one of them will tell you that they started with a deep base of analytics," Miele says.

Miele's group looks for clues to rising costs by studying hospital admissions, prescription patterns, and medical management cases. Miele tries to save companies money by challenging a company's health care vendors when a problem is detected.

Some companies are turning to vendors like WellNet, which creates programs aimed at simplifying information so even CEOs who can't maintain a full-time focus on the health care problem can quickly understand what's driving higher costs.