Colorado patients, health insurers and taxpayers spent nearly $26 million in 2016, up 50 percent in just five years, to treat injuries related to firearms, according to new data that provide a unique look at gun violence in the state.

The numbers also show that health insurance claims for firearm injuries are on the rise in Colorado, more than tripling between 2012 and 2016, although a change in how injuries are documented at hospitals could also have played a role in the apparent increases.

The analysis comes from the Denver-based Center for Improving Value in Health Care, which manages a database of health care claims and cost information. CIVHC — pronounced “civic” — ran the numbers at the request of The Denver Post.

The Post made that request to gain insight into an emerging way of examining guns and their impact in society. While many of the conversations in the wake of another mass shooting focus on criminal laws and government regulations, health experts have increasingly begun to urge a different approach. Gun deaths and injuries, they say, should be discussed in the same way people look at the flu or car crashes: They’re a public health issue.

For instance, a report last year by a Denver Public Health epidemiologist — someone who studies patterns in injuries or diseases — found big disparities along racial and ethnic lines for certain types of firearm injuries. In February, a group of doctors held an educational event at a Centennial gun club, where they learned about different types of firearms and how to talk about gun safety with patients.

Dr. Bill Burman, the executive director of Denver Public Health, said the numbers from CIVHC provide more data for this discussion — albeit with limitations.

“It’s yet another reason to work on a public health approach to gun violence, for people and for dollars,” he said.

So, about those limitations: Right in the middle of the analysis period — which runs from 2012 through 2016, the most recent year that data are available for — hospitals had to change the coding system they use to document claims. That makes it difficult to track trends for specific types of injuries over the years, although CIVHC was able to track total claims and costs.

There’s another caveat, too. A single injury can result in multiple insurance claims, so the number of claims should not be taken as a stand-in for the number of people injured.

But, with those limitations in mind, the data still produces surprises.

CIVHC found that claims and costs are rising. In 2012, $17.2 million was spent in Colorado to cover 1,330 claims for firearm-related injuries. That grew by 2016 to $25.8 million to cover 4,350 claims.

Accidental gun injuries in 2016 more than doubled the combined claims for all other injury causes — assaults, intentionally self-inflicted injuries and injuries that were unclassified or of undetermined intent. But they also cost less per claim than any other type of injury, a little over $500, on average.

Gunshot wounds and other firearm-related injuries from assaults were much more costly to treat, with a total of $16.1 million to cover 680 claims, an average of nearly $24,000 per claim.

Taxpayers carried the greatest burden of these costs. While private insurers spent $6.1 million treating firearm-related injuries in 2016, Medicaid in Colorado spent $10.6 million. It spent $20.2 million in 2015, according to the numbers, even though it received fewer claims.

These numbers generally echo other health figures when it comes to firearm injuries and deaths.

Nationally in 2016, the number and rate of non-fatal gunshot injuries due to assaults was the highest it had been in at least 17 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accidental gun injuries were at a similar peak.

Ken Scott, the Denver Public Health epidemiologist who worked on last year’s report, said hospitalizations for gun-related injuries capture only a portion of the bigger picture. Between 2000 and 2015, 4,005 people were hospitalized in Colorado for firearm-related injuries and survived. In that same period, 8,765 died from gunshot wounds, the large majority of those by suicide.

“The majority of gun injuries are fatalities,” Burman said, “and they never make it to hospitalization.”

When they do, that’s when emergency medicine physicians such as Dr. Comilla Sasson, who is also a faculty member at the Colorado School of Public Health, see them. She treated patients from the Aurora movie theater shooting in 2012 and she readily recalls other cases, too — like a 3-year-old shot in a drive-by shooting and a teenager shot and paralyzed.

“Those are the stories that stick with you,” she said.

For her, the CIVHC numbers can be a starting point for examining further the impact of guns in society over the coming years. The seemingly nonstop spate of mass shootings, she said, has raised public awareness about gun violence. At the same time, gun sales are brisk. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation processed more than 126,000 background checks for gun purchases through April — ahead of last year’s pace by about 5 percent.

Sasson said the two trends could make this a teachable moment. Gun owners could encourage public education about safe storage and safe handling of firearms. And doctors could talk more with patients about preventing gun violence — in short, she said, a public health campaign.

“These,” she said, “are all preventable — 100 percent preventable.”