Databases

The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) was formed in 1998 as an innovative solution to the health crisis faced by Arkansas. ACHI’s transformation of data into an evidence base for policy decision making is a central component of our health policy and program development. The Arkansas Health Data Initiative (HDI) is a comprehensive system that integrates data sets from a variety of state and national sources providing a unique ability to synthesize key pieces of information previously held separately. Research using these data informs a comprehensive understanding of health and identifies optimal opportunities for the continued improvement of our public systems. The systematic integration of information from across disparate sources provides peripheral vision to programs typically operating in silos and amplifies the ability of each partner involved to identify common resources and potential new partnerships. This unique capacity also allows Arkansas to recruit state-of-the-art researchers to work with us to find answers to pressing health concerns.

The American Community Survey (ACS) is an ongoing statistical survey that samples a small percentage of the population every year -- giving communities the information they need to plan investments and services.

The U.S. Census Bureau compiles information from household surveys to produce statistics that describe populations and their characteristics, such as age, education, housing and income. The US Census Bureau collects this data by asking household members to provide information about the people who live in the house, apartment, mobile home or group housing. When the data are processed, all personally identifiable information is removed so no person or household is recognizable. The combined data yield general facts and figures such as the number of people with a high school diploma in a given state. People and businesses then use these statistics to study trends, reach conclusions, and make informed decisions.

Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau conducts a census to determine the number of people living in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the census in years ending in zero, on Census Day, which is April 1. The data collected by the decennial census are used to apportion the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives. The first U.S. census was in 1790 during the first term of our first president, George Washington. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson led the effort. The population was 3,929,625, and Congress used these results to apportion 105 seats among 15 states.

The official U.S. Census is an actual enumeration of the people every ten years, generally on April 1 in years ending in a zero. A limited number of questions were asked of every person and housing unit in the United States. Information is available on: age, Hispanic or Latino origin, household relationship, race, sex, tenure (whether the home is owned or rented), vacancy characteristics. Census data can be linked to other datasets, for example to obtain median income for each U.S. zip code.

American FactFinder provides access to data about the United States, Puerto Rico and the Island Areas. The data in American FactFinder come from several censuses and surveys.

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of about 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPS is the primary source of information on the labor force characteristics of the U.S. population. The sample is scientifically selected to represent the civilian non-institutional population. Respondents are interviewed to obtain information about the employment status of each member of the household 15 years of age and older. The sample provides estimates for the nation as a whole and provides data used to obtain model-based estimates for individual states and other geographic areas.

The State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD), from data organizations in participating States, capture discharge information on all emergency department visits that do not result in an admission. Information on patients initially seen in the emergency room and then admitted to the hospital is included in the State Inpatient Databases (SID).

The Kids' Inpatient Database (KID) is of the only all-payer database on hospital inpatient stays for children in the United States. The latest edition of the KID (2009) contains data drawn from 44 State Inpatient Databases on discharges of children 20 years of age and younger. The KID was specifically designed to permit researchers to study a broad range of conditions and procedures related to child health issues. The KID contains clinical and resource use information included in a typical hospital discharge abstract. Researchers and policymakers can use the KID to identify, track, and analyze national trends in health care utilization, access, charges, quality, and outcomes. Identifying information about hospitals is available in states that make this information public and can be used to link the KID to the American Hospital Association Annual Survey database.

The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) can be used to identify, track, and analyze national trends in health care utilization, access, charges, quality, and outcomes. The NIS is the only national hospital database containing charge information on all patients, regardless of payer, including persons covered by Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and the uninsured. For most States, the NIS includes hospital identifiers that permit linkages to the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey Database (Health Forum, LLC © 2010) and county identifiers that permit linkages to the Area Resource File.

The State Ambulatory Surgery and Services Databases (SASD) are State-specific files that include data for ambulatory surgery and other outpatient services from hospital-owned facilities. In addition, some States provide ambulatory surgery and outpatient services from nonhospital-owned facilities. The uniform format of the SASD helps facilitate cross-State comparisons. The SASD are well suited for research that requires complete enumeration of hospital-based ambulatory surgeries within geographic areas or States.

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. MEPS is the most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage.

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), which began in 1996, is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers (doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc.), and employers across the United States. MEPS collects data on the specific health services that Americans use, how frequently they use them, the cost of these services, and how they are paid for, as well as data on the cost, scope, and breadth of health insurance held by and available to U.S. workers.

MEPS currently has two major components: the Household Component (http://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/survey_comp/household.jsp) and the Insurance Component (http://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/survey_comp/Insurance.jsp). The Household Component provides data from individual households and their members, which is supplemented by data from their medical providers. The Insurance Component is a separate survey of employers that provides data on employer-based health insurance.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) makes identifiable data files (IDFs) available to certain stakeholders as allowed by federal laws and regulations as well as CMS policy. IDFs contain protected health information (PHI) and/or personally identifiable information (PII) and CMS is committed to ensuring this information is protected.

The Medicare Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Patient Assessment Instrument (IRF-PAI) contains data items that were developed primarily for Medicare's prospective payment system (PPS) for IRFs. IRF-PAI assessments are performed for all Medicare beneficiaries receiving fee-for-service benefits who are admitted to an IRF-PAI. Two IRF-PAI assessments are collected for each Medicare inpatient rehab facility stay, one at admission and one at discharge. IRF-PAI data items address the physical, cognitive, functional, and psychosocial status of patients. IRF-PAI information includes the following clinical items and case mix adjusters: Patient History, Social Cognition, Functional Status, Bowel/Bladder Management, Diagnoses, Medical Complexities, Pain Status, Oral/Nutrition Status, Functional Prognosis, Safety, and Resources for Discharge.

The Medicare Research Identifiable Files (RIFs) contain person-specific data on Medicare providers, beneficiaries, and recipients including individual identifiers that would permit the identity of a beneficiary or physician to be deduced (e.g., date of birth, age, race, sex, residence information). Five types of Medicare RIFS are available.

EHR Clinical Data: We aggregate EHR data directly from providers, integrating multiple EHRs from across the continuum of care, both inpatient and ambulatory. We capture a comprehensive clinical picture that includes medications, lab results, vital signs, physician notes, diagnoses, procedures, demographics, hospitalizations and outpatient visits. Optum Humedica NorthStarTM provides a longitudinal view of population care, which allows you to quickly develop and modify brand and commercial strategies, measure comparative effectiveness and provide forecasting metrics.

Succeeding in today's highly competitive and regulated health care market requires refined insights that help optimize business strategies and market tactics. Traditional "accurate enough" data matched using probabilistic methods do not meet this need. Optum "precision" data is a rich data set that deterministically links medical and pharmacy claims with robust EHR data on more than 30 million unique lives. We know the origins of our data, and we use unique identifiers to provide validated, linked patient journeys that are continuously updated.

The IMS LifeLink PharMetrics Plus™ database is comprised of commercial health plan information from managed care plans throughout the United States, with adjudicated claims of more than 150 million unique enrollees since 2006. TRI has obtained a multi-user data use agreement to access a random 10 percent sample that contains records for over 8 million individuals.

The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) collects data on cancer incidence and survival from population-based cancer registries throughout the United States. Three databases link SEER data to other sources of data on persons with cancer.

1) The SEER-Medicare Linked Database combines data from SEER with claims data on use of health care services by Medicare beneficiaries. (http://healthservices.cancer.gov/seermedicare/)
2) The SEER-Medicare Health Outcomes Survey Linked Database combines data from SEER with information from the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (MHOS) about the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Advantage Organizations. (http://outcomes.cancer.gov/surveys/seer-mhos/)
3) The SEER-National Longitudinal Mortality Study Linked Database combines data from SEER with data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study (NLMS). (http://surveillance.cancer.gov/disparities/nlms/).

The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is the nation’s premier system of health-related telephone surveys that collect state data about U.S. residents regarding their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services. Established in 1984 with 15 states, BRFSS now collects data in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories. BRFSS completes more than 400,000 adult interviews each year, making it the largest continuously conducted health survey system in the world./p>

For more than 20 years, the Dartmouth Atlas Project has documented glaring variations in how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States. The project uses Medicare data to provide comprehensive information and analysis about national, regional, and local markets, as well as individual hospitals and their affiliated physicians.

This web site provides access to all Atlas reports and publications, as well as interactive tools to allow visitors to view specific regions and perform their own comparisons and analyses. These tools have helped other groups create reports like those listed on our Case Studies page (http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/tools/casestudies.aspx). A selection of videos and presentations can be found on our Multimedia page (http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/pages/multimedia).

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States. The survey is unique in that it combines interviews and physical examinations. NHANES is a major program of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). NCHS is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and has the responsibility for producing vital and health statistics for the Nation.

The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) gathers information on family life, marriage and divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of contraception, and men’s and women’s health. The survey results are used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and others to plan health services and health education programs, and to do statistical studies of families, fertility, and health.

The Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), 1988-94, is of primary interest to researchers interested in analyzing historical data on demographic, socioeconomic, dietary, and health-related questions and medical, dental, and physiological measurements. More current data on these topics is available from the ongoing NHANES survey.

The National Home Health Aide Survey (NHHAS), the first national probability survey of home health aides, was designed to provide national estimates of home health aides employed by agencies that provide home health and/or hospice care. NHHAS, a multistage probability sample survey, was conducted as a supplement to the 2007 CDC Home National Home and Hospice Care Survey (NHHCS).

The National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) is designed to provide accurate and reliable health care statistics that answer key questions of interest to health care and public health professionals, researchers and health care policy makers. This includes tracking the latest trends affecting hospitals and health care organizations and factors that influence the use of health care resources, the quality of health care and disparities in health care services provided to population subgroups in the United States.

This new survey integrates inpatient data formerly collected by the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhds.htm) with the emergency department (ED), outpatient department (OPD), hospital-based ambulatory surgery location (ASL), and freestanding ambulatory surgery center (ASC) data collected by the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ahcd.htm). The integration of these two surveys allows examination of care provided across treatment settings. It will also be possible to link the survey data to the National Death Index (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ndi.htm) and the Medicare Provider Analysis and ReviewExternal Web Site Icon (MedPAR) (https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Files-for-Order/IdentifiableDataFiles/index.html) and Medicaid Statistical Information SystemExternal Web Site Icon (MSIS) (https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Computer-Data-and-Systems/MSIS/index.html?redirect=/MSIS/) datasets to obtain a more complete picture of patient care.

Since 1994, the National Immunization Survey (NIS), conducted by the National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases and the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has provided the public with important statistics about childhood immunization and related health matters.

The National Nursing Assistant Survey (NNAS) is the first national study of nursing assistants working in nursing facilities in the United States. The NNAS will look at the important role of nursing assistants in providing long-term care services for the growing elderly and chronically ill population.

The NNAS, part of the National Nursing Home Survey, will provide new information needed to recruit, retain, and expand paraprofessional long-term care workforce. The survey will help identify nursing assistants priorities, ways to meet those priorities, and how to prevent staffing shortages in the future.

The CDC’s YRBSS is the only surveillance system designed to monitor a wide range of priority health risk behaviors among representative samples of high school students at the national, state, and local levels.

National, state, and large urban school district surveys are conducted every two years among high school students throughout the United States. These surveys monitor priority health risk behaviors including unintentional injuries and violence; tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use; sexual behaviors that contribute to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection; unhealthy dietary behaviors; and physical inactivity. These surveys also monitor obesity and asthma among students.

The National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery (NSAS) is the only national study of ambulatory surgical care in hospital-based and freestanding ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). Efforts are now underway to include ambulatory surgery centers in the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). The NHAMCS website (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ahcd.htm) provides more information on the efforts.

The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) touches on multiple, intersecting aspects of children’s lives. The survey includes physical and mental health status, access to quality health care, as well as information on the child’s family, neighborhood and social context.

The survey provides a broad range of information about children’s health and well-being collected in a standardized manner that allows comparisons across states as well as comparisons to the nation. It also serves to complement the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (NS-CSHCN) by providing data on the health of the general U.S. child population.

The State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey (SLAITS) collects important health care data at State and local levels. This data collection mechanism was developed by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is comprised of 11 survey modules. It supplements current national data collection strategies by providing in-depth State and local area data to meet various program and policy needs in an ever-changing health care system. The surveys focus on selected topics that include; (Iowa and Washington State, data collected 1997) Child Well-Being and Welfare (Texas and Minnesota, data collected 1998-99), National Survey of Early Childhood Health (NSECH) (National Sample, data collected 2000), National Asthma Survey (NAS) (National Sample and four State samples, data collected 2003), National Survey of Adoptive Parents (NSAP) (National sample, data collected 2007), Survey of Adult Transition and Health (SATH) (Follow-back sample, data collected 2007), Influenza Vaccination Module for Children (IVMC) (National and State samples, data collected 2007), National Survey of Adoptive Parents of Children with Special Health Care Needs (NSAP-SN) (National sample, data collected 2008), Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services (National sample, data collected 2011), National Survey of Children in Nonparental Care (New) (National sample, data collected 2013), National Survey of the Diagnosis and Treatment of ADHD and Tourette Syndrome (New) (National sample, data collected 2014).

The National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (NLAES) is a multipurpose survey designed to collect longitudinal data on the prevalence of alcohol abuse and dependence associated with disabilities. Data collected include detailed measures of alcohol consumption and patterns of use; consequences of alcohol use' other drug use and associated disorders; other psychiatric disorders; other medical problems; detailed income from a variety of different sources for use in assessing the economic impact of alcohol disorders; treatment utilization; and awareness of alcohol warning labels.

The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) are a set of surveys designed to gather information at multiple points in time on the labor market activities and other significant life events of several groups of men and women.

1) National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) (http://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy97.htm)
2) National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) (http://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy79.htm)
3) NLSY79 Children and Young Adults (http://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy79ch.htm)
4) National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Mature Women (NLSW) (http://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsorig.htm)
5) National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Men and Older Men (http://www.bls.gov/nls/oldyoungmen.htm).

The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) is a public health surveillance system that monitors drug-related hospital emergency departments (EDs) and drug-related deaths investigated by medical examiners and coroners (MEs).

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) National Database is the premier clinical data registry for cardiothoracic surgery. It includes three component parts: the Adult Cardiac Surgery Database, the General Thoracic Surgery Database, and the Congenital Heart Surgery Database. This wealth of information is available to physicians, researchers, and the healthcare industry to use for quality improvement, and in comparative effectiveness research, clinical trials, post-market surveillance, and basic and translational research.

The DARTNet Institute is a rapidly growing collaboration of practice-based research networks that are building a national collection of data from electronic health records, claims, and patient-reported outcomes. The networks blend quality improvement, effectiveness, and translational research with a data driven-learning system. The learning system includes advanced performance measures and assistance with the development and deployment of clinical decision support systems.

DARTNet is a federated network of electronic health record data and other clinical information from multiple organizations across the United States. A federated network is a collection of databases that reside in multiple member practices and that are linked through a secure Web-based system so they can be searched and queried as one large database while maintaining privacy and confidentiality of patient data.

The nine distinct research networks that make up DARTNet Institute offer access to approximately 12.5 million patient visits per year, 5 million patient lives, and approximately five billion data points.

The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) is a database that contains information on adverse event and medication error reports submitted to FDA. The database is designed to support the FDA's post-marketing safety surveillance program for drug and therapeutic biologic products. The informatic structure of the FAERS database adheres to the international safety reporting guidance issued by the International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH E2B1). Adverse events and medication errors are coded to terms in the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA)2 terminology.

LTCFocUS.org website hosts data regarding the health and functional status of nursing home residents, characteristics of care facilities, state policies relevant to long term care services and financing, and data characterizing the markets in which facilities exist and, in the future, we plan to expand to include information about other sectors of the long-term care system. These data will allow researchers to examine the relationship between state policies and local market forces and the quality of long-term care. Researchers can use this website to examine care processes and resident outcomes within the context of their local markets and regulatory practices. Policymakers can use the information to shape state and local guidelines, policies, and regulations that promote high-quality, cost-effective, equitable care to older Americans.

Data Sources: Online Survey Certification And Reporting (OSCAR), Minimum Data Set (MDS), State Policy Data, Area Resource File (ARF), and Residential History File (RHF).

CEVR is a leader on issues pertaining to value, cost-effectiveness, and risk tradeoffs in health care decisions. We inform national clinical and public health policy issues through our analysis of the benefits, risks and costs of strategies to improve health and health care. We undertake scientific research projects, advance methods development for the field, train the next generation of practitioners and users, and work with policymakers worldwide to develop reasoned policy solutions.

The Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial is a large population-based randomized trial designed and sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to determine the effects of screening on cancer-related mortality and secondary endpoints in men and women aged 55 to 74. The screening component of the trial was completed in 2006. Participants are being followed and additional data will be collected through 2015. In 2011, the follow up was streamlined and began being moved from the Screening Centers to the Centralized Data Coordinating Center (CDCC). Numerous epidemiologic and ancillary studies are also underway to answer related crucial questions.

The Cancer Data Access System (CDAS) (https://biometry.nci.nih.gov/cdas/) is a web portal that facilitates access to PLCO data other than the biospecimens in EEMS. CDAS provides extensive documentation including a summary of the trial, a description of the data collected, and a searchable list of research projects under way with the data and published results. Analytic data sets for prostate, lung, colorectal, ovarian, breast, biliary, bladder, endometrial, glioma, head & neck, hematopoietic, liver, male breast, melanoma, pancreas, renal, thyroid, and upper GI are available with nearly all the study data available for screening, incidence and mortality analyses.

This extensive PLCO data base has been organized to focus on 18 cancer sites of interest, as well as available questionnaires, ancillary studies, and lab results.

The National Trauma Data Bank® (NTDB) is the largest aggregation of trauma registry data ever assembled. The goal of the NTDB is to inform the medical community, the public, and decision makers about a wide variety of issues that characterize the current state of care for injured persons.

NTDB offers several Research Data Set (RDS) products:

• The NTDB RDS contains all records sent to NTDB for each admission year. Use this dataset to explore data on pediatric patients, or Level III, IV, V, or undesignated trauma centers. If you are looking at small patient cohort, such as a specific injury or procedure, you may want to use the NTDB RDS because the overall number of patients is much larger. This data set is not appropriate for making national estimates or yearly comparisons.

• The NSP RDS provides national estimates for adult patients seen in Level I and II trauma centers. These datasets contain weighted data for up 100 randomly selected trauma centers. The NSP should be used when it’s necessary to make inferences to the population of patients seen in US trauma centers, and when you will be making comparisons across admission years. The NSP should not be used to examine specific injuries or procedures.

AHA Data represents information that is directly provided by nearly 6,300 hospitals and more than 400 health care systems. Our data warehouse covers an array of data points, including demographics, operations, service line, staffing, c-suite information, expenses, physician organization structures, beds, utilization and more. Historical data sets are available for many of these tools.

To provide an in-depth look at the issues and challenges physicians face in the rapidly changing health care system, HSC conducts nationally representative surveys of non-federal physicians who spend at least 20 hours a week in direct patient care.

The Community Tracking Study (CTS) Physician Survey data collection was focused primarily on physicians practicing in 60 randomly selected U.S. communities, allowing analyses to be conducted at both the national and community level. In 2008, the CTS Physician Survey was replaced by the HSC Health Tracking Physician Survey. The new survey name reflects the substitution of the clustered 60-site sample design with a more efficient national sample.

Both the CTS Physician Surveys and the HSC 2008 Health Tracking Physician Survey cover a wide variety of physician and practice dimensions, from basic physician demographic information, practice organization and career satisfaction to insurance acceptance, compensation arrangements, information technology use and charity care provision. The 2008 survey also includes questions on care management, quality reporting, care coordination, malpractice concerns, ownership of hospitals and medical equipment, and greater detail on use of information technology.

The National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) is part of The Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism (ANF) multi-year research project. Its purpose is to track the effects of recent federal policy changes decentralizing many social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, job training, and social services. In collaboration with Child Trends, researchers from the Urban Institute monitor program changes and fiscal developments, along with changes in the well-being of children and families. The NSAF is a household survey that can be used to produce cross-sectional estimates for a wide variety of child, adult and family well-being indicators at the state level for 13 states and the nation as a whole. Data collection for the NSAF was carried out in 1997, 1999 and 2002 by Westat.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death behind heart disease in Arkansas. The most frequently diagnosed cancers in the state include lung, colorectal, breast cancer among women, and prostate cancer among men. Due to the increasing burden, it will be important for the Arkansas Central Cancer Registry to collect cancer information for surveillance, to conduct cancer investigations, to assist initiatives for early detection and prevention, and to supply data for research and policy endeavors. Since 1996, through funding from the National Program of Cancer Registry (NPCR) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the ACCR has been collecting population-based cancer incidence data among residents in Arkansas. The ACCR collects high quality and complete data, and has been consistently certified as Registry of Distinction by NPCR and a gold-standard registry designated by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR).

The HIV/AIDS Surveillance Program, at the Arkansas Department of Health, is responsible for monitoring the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Arkansas in order to provide information to guide policy decisions, target resources, and help to evaluate services and prevention activities. This involves the collection, maintenance, and analysis of name-based HIV/AIDS information. All state HIV/AIDS surveillance systems are also responsible for maintaining the standards set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as outlined in the 2006 Technical Guidance for HIV/AIDS Surveillance Programs, Volume III.

The Arkansas Department of Health, in collaboration with the American Heart Association, manages a stroke registry by collecting real time data on stroke treatment from hospitals serving Arkansans.

The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) is a centralized public health system with four main Centers and the Public Health Laboratory that work with 94 local health units to provide clinical preventive services, administer public health programs, and issue licenses and certifcates. Everything at ADH is done because we believe that communities can be healthier and safer, and people can live longer. Below are fact sheets for every county in Arkansas.

The Arkansas Hospital Discharge Data System is one of the most important tools for addressing a broad range of health policy issues. Act 670 of 1995, A.C.A. 20-7-201 et seq., requires all hospitals licensed in the state of Arkansas to report information on inpatient discharges. “All hospitals” include general medical surgical (GMS) hospitals, Critical Access Hospitals (CAH), long-term acute care hospitals (LTAC), psychiatric and rehabilitation hospitals. The Act also specifically prohibits the release of any information from the collected data that identifies, or could be used to identify, any individual patient, provider, institution or health plan.

Beginning in 1996 with very limited data, the system has grown to include virtually all discharges with a stay of more than one day. Information reported includes demographics such as date of birth, gender, race and ethnicity. Clinical information includes dates of service, discharge status, diagnoses, procedures and injury data. Charges are included, as well.

Staff edit and complete these data, then combine data from all the hospitals into a dataset for each calendar year. Staff then are able to access information for policy, planning and research applications for the submitting hospitals and many other interested parties. The de-identified datasets are shared with other states, for services provided in Arkansas to residents of that state, and with the national HCUP dataset.

The State Health Alliance for Records Exchange (SHARE) is Arkansas’s only statewide Health Information Exchange (HIE). SHARE is a product of the Office of Health Information Technology which is part of the Arkansas Department of Health. SHARE securely connects doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care professionals. It allows health care professionals to view a complete patient medical history so they can have the information they need to provide the best care possible.