Health Data Store

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Emily Birmingham

AHCA Ambulatory/Outpatient Data

The Agency for Health Care Administration collects inpatient discharge, outpatient and ambulatory, and emergency room 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, outpatient, or ER visit. 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.

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 hospital data from 2005 to the most recently released complete quarter.

Reporting Hospitals

Florida has approximately 300 hospitals. AHCA collects data on 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

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.

Data Suppression and Restrictions

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.

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.