The largest collection of hospital all-payor, multi-year, encounter-level data is now more usable due to state-level efforts to provide better information faster, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality experts said Wednesday.
AHRQ's "Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project," (HCUP) collects hospital administrative data on hospital inpatient, emergency department and ambulatory surgery care.
Much of the information is now available much sooner, "because states have been very innovative in turning around their databases," said Dr. Claudia Steiner, a research medical officer within AHRQ who has worked on HCUP for a number of years.
For example, in the last year some states have begun providing 2009 patient-identifiable data, encrypted for privacy. Consequently, reports can be obtained showing when patients have to return to the hospital for revisits and re-hospitalizations, Steiner said. That's a capability that may be important for analyzing quality of care.
Currently, 45 states provide inpatient data to HCUP, 30 states provide emergency department data and 31 states provide ambulatory surgery data. The hospitals reporting include multi-specialty general hospitals, public hospitals, academic medical centers, and hospitals specializing in obstetrics-gynecology, ear, nose and throat, orthopedics, and pediatrics.
HCUP actually includes six databases, the national ones being inpatient hospital discharge data from a sample of hospitals; pediatric inpatient hospital discharge data from a sample of discharges; and emergency department data from a sample of hospitals.
Much of the information can be called up on the HCUP Website. More detailed information may be downloaded for a fee but it requires special software and computer power.
Examples of questions the project's free online query system, HCUPnet, can answer include the percentage of hospitalizations for children that are uninsured, by state; the most expensive conditions treated in U.S. hospitals; and the trend in admissions for depression.
The various databases can support research on use and cost of care; trends in utilization and costs; quality of care; impact of health policy changes; diffusion of medical technology; malpractice variation; and treatment effectiveness, according to AHRQ.
Steiner demonstrated the site by calling up the number of cesarean births over time and by state.
The databases can also be linked to external files.
HCUP also regularly publishes statistical briefs, fact books and other publications and it has courses online and live technical assistance to help researchers use the databases.
Steiner also said that within the next year or so AHRQ will begin looking at how the HCUP might be changed or expanded.
