CISC215 Database Design and Application Development

H-Cup Program & Tools

Ohio is one of the active partners of the ‘Healthcare cost and utilization project’ abbreviated as (H-cup or HCUP). The “contact person for the state” is Heidi Brown and can be reached through the phone number (614) 221-7614 or (614) 358-2721. Other contact information is via ‘email heidib@ohanet.org or through the website http://www.ohiohospitals.org/.’

HCUP is a program comprising of databases, tools plus other products developed via the ‘Federal-State-Industry partnership.’ The program is sponsored by the healthcare research & quality agency. It enables policy maker’s researchers, insurers, and other organizations to study the delivery of healthcare as well as the patient outcome at the community, state, regional and national levels (Hellinger, 2004). The program contains a set of databases from the administrative data. Besides, it has an encounter phase and clinical/nonclinical data comprising of listed diagnoses & procedures, client’s (patient) population, discharge status plus charges for every other patient.

To boost the capability of H-cup databases, the program provides a myriad of tools plus software’s to be used in the H-cup plus other related administrative databases. Most of the tools can be downloaded from the main website, H-cup –US, while others ordered via the H-cup central distributor. Besides, all of the H-cup tools plus software are free of charge. They include the H-cup net, H-cup fast stats, quality indicators abbreviated as (QI’s) and the clinical classification tool to mention just a few.

H-cup net: It is an online query tool based on the H-cup data. The H-cup net provides statistics from National databases like the ‘National inpatient database’ (NID), and state databases such as the ‘state ambulatory surgery & service database’ (SASD). This tool is used to “identify, track, analyze, and compare statistics on emergency care, hospitals plus retrieving measures of standard” basing on the agency of healthcare research & quality ("Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) | Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality", 2017). The tool (H-cup net) is also used in trend analysis with the healthcare information recorded from the 1990s onwards. It features hospital re-admissions which provide users with data from the hospital readmission within 4 weeks of hospital discharge.

H-cup Fast Stats: The tool provides easy access to the current health information subjects from the H-cup database. It employs visual statistical displays in the form of tables or trend figures to pass sophisticated data at a glance. The first subject on the tool “Impact of health insurance development on hospitals use” was launched in the mid of 2015 with information updates released after every 4 months commencing in October 2011 (Fernow, n.d). The subject comprises of data from 42 states in the capacity of hospital discharges via the payer group. The second subject “National hospitalization and cost” was launched in the late 2015 and focused on the national numbers on inpatient stays. With time, the tool (H-cup fast stats) will be updated frequently for timely, subject specific national as well as the state-level numbers.

Quality indicators (QIs): The AHRQ QI is a measure of the healthcare standard that uses readily available hospital inpatient administrative information. According to Fernow (n.d) the QI is used in highlighting quality concerns, identifying regions of thorough research as well as track changes with time. The tool comprises of 4 modules namely pediatric QIs, Inpatient QI, Prevention QIs and the patient safety indicators.

The clinical classification program: It provides ways of classifying procedures into a meaningful category that can be used in reporting a myriad of topics. The program has 4 versions for one service & procedures, ICD 10 CM/CPS, ICD-9-CM plus the classification software for reporting mortality (Fernow, n.d.).

References

A comparison of a multistate inpatient EHR database to the HCUP Nationwide Inpatient Sample. (2015) (1st ed.).

Fernow, L. In-Patient HCUP Data for Coronary Atherosclerosis Shows Significant Differences for Medicaid Patients. SSRN Electronic Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.280433

Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) | Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality. (2017). Ahrq.gov. Retrieved 29 May 2017, from https://www.ahrq.gov/research/data/hcup/index.html

Hellinger, F. (2004). HIV Patients in the HCUP Database: A Study of Hospital Utilization and Costs. Inquiry, 41(1), 95-105. http://dx.doi.org/10.5034/inquiryjrnl_41.1.95