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Medical Care Research and Review
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What's this?

Understanding and Enhancing the Value of Hospital Discharge Data

Julie A. Schoenman

NORC at the University of Chicago, schoenman-julie{at}norc.uchicago.edu

Janet P. Sutton

NORC at the University of Chicago

Anne Elixhauser

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Denise Love

The National Association of Health Data Organizations

This work summarizes how hospital discharge data are used, identifies strengths and shortcomings, and presents suggestions for enhancing usefulness of the data. Results demonstrate that discharge data are used in a wide range of applications by diverse users. Uses include public health and population-based applications, as well as quality assessment, informed purchasing, strategic planning, and policymaking. Strategies to enhance the utility of discharge data include: improving the quality of existing data elements and adding new data elements that will support more advanced analyses, improving linkages with data from nonhospital settings and databases outside health care, and developing a technical assistance network to support statewide data organizations in their efforts to collect and analyze discharge data. As our nation moves toward universal electronic medical records, it will be important to keep in mind the many uses of discharge data in order to maintain the data capacity to fill these needs.

Key Words: inpatient discharge data • hospital administrative data • state inpatient data • public health • injury/disease surveillance • quality improvement • informed purchasing

Medical Care Research and Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, 449-468 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1077558707301963
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