Resources: AHCJ Data
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Leaded aviation fuel a threat to public health, children Investigation delves into Wash.’s prescription drug problem Share your thoughts on database design for tracking pharma payments to doctors Reuters shows how shell companies hide Medicare fraud in plain sight Journalists should learn about study design, evidence-based medicine |
Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records How often does your state medical board search doctors in the National Practitioner Data Bank? Surprisingly not often, according to data provided to the Association of Health Care Journalists by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, which runs the data bank. AHCJ and other media groups have been pushing the government to restore unfettered access to the Public Use File of the data bank, citing important stories that journalists have written about lax oversight of doctors by state medical boards. AHCJ requested data from HRSA so reporters could see how often their states check the backgrounds of medical doctors and osteopaths, as well as interns and residents. The numbers are available in two different charts. |
National Practitioner Data Bank Public Use File The NPDB is a confidential system that compiles malpractice payouts, hospital discipline and regulatory sanctions against doctors and other health professionals. For years, HRSA has made a public version of it available without identifying information about the health providers. In September 2011, the agency removed the file from its website. The government said it did so because reporters were able to link information in the data bank to specific doctors, and the law prohibits the public use file from identifying doctors. AHCJ and several other journalism organizations are protesting the action and appealing for restoration of the file. In the meantime, Investigative Reporters and Editors, working with AHCJ and the Society of Professional Journalists, has posted the data for download, free to the public. |
Hiding in plain sight: California hospital data Does your local hospital place more cardiac stents than others? Do more of its patients leave the emergency room without being seen? Does it have a high level of C-section births? These questions and others are relatively easy to answer thanks to a data gold mine kept by the obscure California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. It doesn't matter if your hospital is public, nonprofit or for-profit, data on its patients and services are available online. Charles Ornstein, senior reporter at ProPublica and president of AHCJ's board of directors, will guide you through using the data to answer those questions and more. |
HHS hospital mortality and readmission data Learn how to use the dataProPublica senior reporter Charles Ornstein has written an article showing how the data can be used. When the data were originally released, AHCJ held a webinar that provides an introduction to this data, including ideas on how to use the data in your own area. An MP3 recording of the webinar is available. Two tip sheets also will provide guidance on using spreadsheets: Intro to investigating health data using spreadsheets Finding patterns and trends in health data: Pivot tables in spreadsheets The "Outcome of Care Measures" from the U.S. Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is an attempt to show what happens after patients with certain conditions receive hospital care. Using this data, you can identify hospitals in your state, community or ZIP code with worse-than-expected hospital outcomes for one or multiple years. By filtering and sorting with spreadsheet software, you can quickly compare hospitals. Numbers can be a start — not the end — of a story. Remember that these numbers only mean so much. Using data can give you a valuable tip sheet to generate ideas and questions in your pursuit of a story. The AHCJ version of the data should help you understand outcome measures, namely 30-day mortality rates and readmission rates. These figures help you understand, for particular conditions, whether a hospital's rates are in line with national averages, significantly better or significantly worse. |
Global Health Data Exchange at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation maintains the Global Health Data Exchange (or GHDx), a sort of clearinghouse for global public health data sets. |
Nursing Homes: Special Focus Facility Initiative On Jan. 20, 2011, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the most recent list of nursing homes in its Special Focus Facility Initiative. These are homes that "(a) have had a history of serious quality issues and (b) are included in a special program to stimulate improvements in their quality of care." The SFF Initiative is intended to address nursing homes that cycle in and out of compliance based on inspections. Nursing homes in this program are visited in person by survey teams twice as frequently as other nursing homes (about twice per year). This list includes new additions to the SFF initiative, nursing homes that have failed to show significant improvement, nursing homes that have shown significant improvement, nursing homes that have sustained significant improvement for about 12 months and nursing homes that were either terminated by CMS from participation in Medicare and Medicaid within the past few months, or voluntarily chose not to continue such participation. |
Analyze patient satisfaction surveys to evaluate local hospitals
AHCJ has compiled Excel files that allow you to compare more than three hospitals at a time, using spreadsheet or database software to filter, sort and use other analysis tools with precision. By looking at data for hospitals in your community or state, you may be able to quickly spot trends. Does one chain have a better track record than another? Do for-profit hospitals perform better than nonprofits? How about public hospitals? |
Finding patterns and trends in health data: Pivot tables in spreadsheets Excel pivot tables are a powerful way to organize, interpret and manipulate numerical data. In this tip sheet, reporters will learn the skills necessary to apply these tables in real-world situations, including analyzing the Nursing Home Compare data. |
Medicare's Nursing Home Compare database
Nursing Home Compare, according to the Medicare Web site, is meant to provide information to help individuals, family members, caregivers, and those who assist them find and compare nursing homes and make informed decisions about nursing home care. AHCJ has reduced key elements in Nursing Compare data into a more manageable formats in Excel spreadsheets. |
Intro to investigating health data using spreadsheets
While it's important to remember that a spreadsheet can give you a lead but can't replace your news judgment, this will help you navigate around spreadsheets, understand some basic references and learn some good practices in dealing with data. |
Data files from the National Center for Health Statistics The National Center for Health Statistics offers downloadable public-use data files through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's FTP file server. Data sets, documentation and questionnaires from NCHS surveys and data collection systems are available. |
Community Health Data Initiative The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Institute of Medicine launched this initiative to help consumers and communities get more value out of the nation's wealth of health data. It includes a number of web tools, reports and downloadable data. |
Beginning in March 2008, the federal government began publicly reporting patient satisfaction measures for hospitals across the United States. The survey tool, known as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey, is the first attempt by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to standardize survey results of patients' perspectives of hospital care. 
In November 2007, the U.S. Medicare Web site released detailed information about every Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing home in the country. Nursing Home Compare uses data compiled from inspections and compares health and fire safety concerns as well as quality measures and staffing information.
This tutorial will give you a jumpstart on using spreadsheets to investigate health data.