DSHS Texas Hospital 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 DSHS Texas Hospital 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 Texas Department of State Health Services collects and releases information on Texas inpatient hospital discharges on a quarterly basis. There are now records for over 3 million discharges annually. The DSHS discharge files hold patient-level data for individual inpatient hospital stays and include data on diagnoses, procedures, charges, and patient demographics. A detailed description of the fields contained in the file can be found in the User Manual .

Some useful data elements include:

• Patient gender
• Patient age group
• Admission Source
• Patient County and Zip Code
• Two payment sources
• 25 Diagnosis Codes (IC-D-9)
• 25 Surgical Procedure Codes

RPC holds these files from 1999 to the most recently released quarter.

Reporting Hospitals
There are approximately 583 hospitals in the state of Texas. DSHS collects data from all state licensed hospitals except for those that do not seek insurance payment or government reimbursement, and those that meet the following statutory criteria for rural exemption: (1)hospitals located in a county with a population of less than 35,000, or hospitals located in an area that the Census Bureau does not define as urbanized, which have fewer than 100 licensed beds; and (2) are not a state owned hospital or owned by an entity that owns or manages one or more other hospitals. The data file includes a table of each hospital’s reporting status.

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 DSHS data has many potential uses for healthcare planners, financial analysts, and hospital executives. RPC offers custom reports using the DSHS 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.

• Hospital market share analysis, using patient origin data
• Service mix analysis, using DRGs, diagnosis and procedure codes
• Average charges by region, patient diagnosis, DRG and hospital department (revenue code)
• Payor mix analysis by provider and geographical region
• Patient demographic analysis by region and payor
• Procedure and diagnosis rates by patient sex and age group
• Average inpatient length of stay across geographies, health care systems, hospitals and patient populations
• Referral patterns
• Inpatient market shares and outmigration by zip code
• Historical discharge, patient origin, and diagnosis trends

Data Suppression
To protect patient identity, the Texas Hospital Discharge data suppresses certain fields in instances where their inclusion may jeopardize patient anonymity, and also suppress physician identities. The last two digits of patient zip codes that have less than 30 discharges are also masked.

Data Use Restrictions
Because of data use restrictions, RPC cannot sell access to the raw data, but can provide a wide array of tabulations and descriptive statistics using the Texas Hospital Discharge data.