Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\nLaunched in 2007, DHIN was the first live, statewide health information exchange in the nation, working to address the state\u2019s needs for timely, reliable and relevant health care information. Today, DHIN is connected to every one of the state\u2019s acute\u2011care hospitals, long\u2011term care and skilled nursing facilities, and nearly every ordering provider, funneling more than 14 million clinical results annually into a community record spanning about 3 million patients nationwide.<\/p>\n
Today, that clinical data is being supplemented by the voluminous documentation \u2014 diagnoses, procedures, medications, costs \u2014 that is required to process insurance claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Delaware Health Care Claims Database contains claims records for 991,300 unique persons, representing more than 60% of Delaware residents, including Delaware Medicare, Medicaid, and several commercial plans with data spanning 2013-2025 \u2014 all anonymized to protect the privacy of individual patients.<\/p>\n
Dr. Gurpreet Kaur had not worked with claims data before joining DHIN as a clinical analyst but quickly became enamored by what it can do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLinking both clinical and claims, that brings all together a new picture,\u201d Gurpreet said. \u201cClaims data tells you what actually happened to a patient \u2014 from diagnosis to treatment to outcome. Combining both of them and utilizing both the databases, we can support state agencies, non-state agencies, and other programs with information and recommendations about the affordability, accessibility and availability of health care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clinical data \u2014 drawn from detailed patient records including diagnoses, lab results, vital signs, chart notes, imaging scans, etc. \u2014 has long been a gold standard of data-driven health research, but it can be difficult to collect and code.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Medical claims data offers three key advantages over clinical data, including:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s more complete \u2014 partially because of the sheer number of records created for insurance purposes, but also because insurance follows the patient at every stage of treatment \u2014 from clinic to general practice to specialists to therapy. \u201cEven if they change insurance, even if they change their doctor or health care plan, as long as they are within the reporting area, we can track them,\u201d Dr. Kaur said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very data-system friendly. Thanks to all of the codes that are used in the insurance industry, it\u2019s easy to drill down to specific diagnoses or treatment options, and the data linked to billing addresses connects patient sets to census tracks.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s available much, much more quickly than clinical data, with data ready to be studied less than 30 days after the health care visit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Consider the case of drinking water pollution in Hinckley, California, a story told in the movie \u201cErin Brockovich.\u201d\u00a0 It took the Centers for Disease Control seven years to collect the clinical data that showed a link between drinking water and illnesses in the community \u2014 seven years of knocking on doors, reviewing medical charts, and entering data points one at a time until the full picture emerged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe movie came out before the data was published,\u201d said Terri Lynn Palmer, former DHIN analytics contractor.<\/p>\n
Claims data, had it been available at the time, could have cut that time to less than a year.<\/p>\n
The combination of claims and clinical data \u2014 something that DHIN is uniquely qualified to process \u2014 can be invaluable to universities conducting medical research, studies seeking to pinpoint critical areas of the opioid epidemic, insurance companies evaluating the most effective forms of preventative care, and anyone looking to quickly detect trends in health care.<\/p>\n
That includes the State Council for Persons with Disabilities, which found one group that was far more likely to receive follow-up care following a traumatic brain injury \u2014 teenagers, who as a cohort had a 45% follow-up rate, compared to 19% among the slightly older cohort of 20\u201339-year-olds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was extremely helpful to work with DHIN in that regard,\u201d Lancaster said. \u201cWe would say that we wanted data from this group or that area, and they would work their spreadsheets, because there\u2019s so much that they can pull from the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why were kids more likely to get appropriate care? One possible reason is because legislation requires it \u2014 specifically the Concussion Protection in Youth Athletic Activities Act from Delaware Code Title 16, which requires a doctor\u2019s note after a concussion in non-scholastic sports before kids can return to the field.<\/p>\n
Could other types of legislation open the door for older people seeking care? Perhaps. Until then, Lancaster is using the data for another urgent need \u2014 education, for both patients and legislators.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve actually worked with DHIN to develop some infographics highlighting the disparities, but also highlighting things that people don\u2019t necessarily understand, like the correlation between TBI and epilepsy or other long-term effects,\u201d Lancaster said. \u201cSo hopefully we can continue to utilize the data, and bring more resources to Delaware, because ultimately, that\u2019s the goal, to be able to support those with brain injuries here in Delaware.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRead more from Spotlight Delaware<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sudden workplace accident. A rear-end collision. A hard fall on the basketball court.\u00a0 Nearly 7,000 Delawareans a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-93109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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State Council for Persons with Disabilities<\/p>\n