The Health Data Corner compiles the latest state health care data capacity innovations and policy developments, and showcases select, novel data use cases emerging from states.
- “How To Get Health Data Infrastructure Right For This Moment Of Medicaid Transformation,” Health Affairs. January 18, 2022. Claudia Williams, CEO of Manifest MedEx, California’s leading health data network, and a former senior adviser for health innovation and technology at the White House, outlines three principles states can follow to make bold and achievable progress toward building smart data infrastructure to support Medicaid transformation.
- “Improving Data on Race and Ethnicity: A Roadmap to Measure and Advance Health Equity,” Grantmakers In Health (GIH). December 2021. In a new report, GIH, in collaboration with the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), discuss race and ethnicity data collection in federally administered health programs and outlines several recommendations for improving that data. These findings and recommendations build upon a previous report from October 2021 that examines the barriers and opportunities to improving the completeness, accuracy, and usability of race and ethnicity data at the state and federal levels.
- “The Colorado Health IT Roadmap,” Colorado Office of eHealth Innovation (OeHI), November 2021. Colorado released a new report that outlines a series of recommendations for “harnessing and expanding the digital tools and services that support the health of all Coloradans.” The three primary goals of the roadmap are to: ensure stakeholders share data and have equitable access to needed health and social information; facilitate access to high-quality, in-person, virtual and remote health services; and, to improve health equity through inclusive and innovative use of health IT and digital health solutions.
- “State All Payer Claims Databases Advisory Committee Report with Recommendations Under Section 735 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act Of 1974,” October 2021. Under ERISA section 735, the SAPCDAC was charged with advising the Secretary of Labor regarding the standardized reporting format for the voluntary reporting by group health plans to State All Payer Claims Databases. Recommendations on data standardization from the SAPCDAC report include:
- Using the APCD Common Data Layout (APCD-CDL) as the basis for standard reporting for submitting self-funded plan data to APCDs;
- Working collaboratively with states to capture non-claims payments and other data needed to support cost and utilization analyses;
- Creating a detailed data dictionary for the elements included in the APCD-CDL data layout
The report also outlines additional recommendations for data submission; data privacy, security, and release; voluntary data submission; and more.
- “The History, Promise and Challenges of State All Payer Claims Databases,” Background Memo for the State All Payer Claims Database Advisory Committee to the Department of Labor, RAND Health Care. June 2, 2021. Using an APCD-focused literature review, environmental scan of APCD websites, and several key informant interviews, RAND recaps several key findings on the state of APCDs today and the events that have led to their development and use.
