The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP, pronounced “H-Cup”) is a family of health care databases and related software tools and products developed through a federal-state-industry partnership and sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). HCUP databases bring together the data collection efforts of state data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations, and the federal government to create a national information resource of patient-level health care data (HCUP Partners) <http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/partners.jsp>. HCUP includes the largest collection of longitudinal hospital care data in the United States, with all-payer, encounter-level information beginning in 1988. These databases enable research on a broad range of health policy issues, including cost and quality of health services, medical practice patterns, access to health care programs, and outcomes of treatments at the national, state, and local market levels.
Join us on Thursday, April 23rd from 1-4 PM for an introduction to HCUP in the ECRI Institute’s auditorium, 5200 Butler Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA, <www.ecri.org>. Participants not driving can take the R5 train <http://www.septa.org/service/destinations/montco/temple_ambler.html> to Ambler and representatives from ECRI institute will pick you up at the train station. The class is FREE and is worth four MLA CE hours. To register, email jderichemond@gmail.com.
The agenda for this class is as follows:
Introduction to HCUP Resources (60 minutes)
- Overview of healthcare administrative data
- Introduction to the 5 main types of HCUP databases
- Benefits and limitations of HCUP databases
- Discussion about the use of HCUP in medical and health services research
Example Publications Using HCUP (30 minutes)
- Review of the wide range of publications that HCUP data have supported, including selected peer-reviewed articles, AHRQ-produced documents, and congressionally-mandated reports.
Break (15 minutes)
HCUPnet – free online tool for retrieving data (45 minutes)
- Demonstration of the HCUP free querying tool
(Note: this section of the course will be very interactive)
Other HCUP-related Tools and Resources (30 minutes)
- Discussion of healthcare software tools that can be applied to HCUP data to enhance the value of the data
- Instruction on where librarians can access detailed documentation about HCUP resources
- Detailed overview of the HCUP User Support Website
Submitted by Jeanette de Richemond, MLIS, AHIP
Education & Credentialing Committee Chair, 2008-2010
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