AHCA Florida Hospital Inpatient Discharge Data

RPC knows that data collection and working with large data sets can be a challenge, and has created the Health Data Store to serve as a continuously updated repository of health care data. The Health Data Store can provide you with customizable data, ranging from large nation-wide data sets to smaller and more pointed reports or health care snapshots. Our experience working with AHCA Florida Hospital Inpatient Discharge Data allows us to query and package the data with confidence. We can also incorporate information from several different data sets to create in-depth, longitudinal analysis of the health care markets you are interested in. Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss how the Health Data Store can help you with your information needs.

The Agency for Health Care Administration collects inpatient discharge data from acute, short-term psychiatric, long-term psychiatric and comprehensive rehabilitation hospitals in Florida. The data are updated on a quarterly basis, and there are approximately 2.5 million records per year. Each record in the dataset corresponds to an individual inpatient hospital stay. The file has patient-level data and includes information on patient demographics, diagnosis and procedure codes, attending physician, operating or performing physicians, and total gross charges. The Health Data Store created a data dictionary for the file, which describes the data elements and layout.

Some useful data elements include:

• Patient Zip Code
• Patient Sex and race
• Up to 31 Diagnosis Codes
• Up to 31 Diagnosis Present on Admission Indicators
• Up to 31 Procedure Codes
• Charges by 22 Revenue Centers
• Discharge status
• Principal Payer

AHCA releases the inpatient data once 75% of the reporting facilities have certified the accuracy of their data, which is usually accomplished by 130 days after the end of a reporting period. All of the data are typically verified within 180 days of the end of the reporting period, meaning the data set is more complete two months after the initial version is released by AHCA. Discharge data from comprehensive rehabilitation hospitals are certified upon submission.

RPC has acute and psychiatric discharge data from 1994 to the most recently released complete quarter, and comprehensive rehabilitation data from 2005 to the most recently released complete quarter. RPC also holds AHCA outpatient and emergency room data, which are described in detail on their individual pages.

Reporting Hospitals
Florida has approximately 294 hospitals. AHCA collects data on 269 acute care, short-term psychiatric, long-term psychiatric and comprehensive rehabilitation facilities. State operated hospitals, federal hospitals, and Shriner’s hospitals are not required to report inpatient data to AHCA.

Data Applications
We can provide custom reports, graphs and maps using this data file and combining it with other health care and demographic files.

The tabulations and analysis RPC offers based on AHCA inpatient hospital data has many potential uses for healthcare planners, financial analysts, and hospital executives. RPC offers custom reports using the AHCA data, and our consultants are happy to talk to you about how we can use the file to best meet your needs. A sample of the kinds of healthcare and financial data that can be gathered from the file are included below.

• Service mix analysis, using DRGs, and procedure codes
• Average charges by region, revenue center, DRG, or hospital
• Payor mix analysis by provider and geographical region
• Patient demographic analysis by region, provider and payor
• Procedure and diagnosis rates by patient sex, age and race
• Average inpatient length of stay across geographies, health care systems, hospitals and patient populations
• Referral and discharge patterns
• Florida inpatient market shares and outmigration by zip code and county
• Historical discharge, patient origin, diagnosis and procedure trends

Data Suppression
In order to protect patient anonymity, AHCA masks certain data elements before providing the collected utilization data. Patient birth dates are converted to ages, patient discharge dates are reported as calendar quarters, and procedure dates are reported as number of days to procedures. In addition, patient IDs and social security numbers are not reported. The Data Guide outlines the data elements that are suppressed for confidentiality.

Data Use Restrictions
Due to confidentiality agreements, the Health Data Store can only release tabulations and analyses based on the AHCA Florida Hospital Inpatient Discharge Data, and not the raw data itself.