HCUP Database, Basing Protocols on Healthcare Data

What is HCUP?
The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, HCUP, is a family of health care databases which are available to you for research and development. HCUP databases bring together data from State data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations (i.e., insurance companies), and the Federal government to create a national information resource of patient-level health care data.

Can I use HCUP to estimate the study duration?
Yes. For example, HCUP can tell you the number of procedures performed each year, and will allow you to drill down to certain details such as region or type of hospital. If 80,000 procedures are performed annually at teaching hospitals, and there are 20 teaching hospitals in the States, you can estimate the number of procedures performed annually at your investigative site based on its size. From there the math to calculate duration is self-evident.

Can I get help Identifying Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria?
Sure. Dr. Steiner will show us how to identify concomitant illnesses, procedures, and medications that accompany a procedure; for example, the number of heart valve replacements accompanied by pacemaker implantations. We might choose to exclude all heart valve patients who concomitantly receive a pacemaker. The result gives a cleaner study population, but limits our enrollment opportunities.

How else can I use HCUP data?
HCUP data might enable you to discover the frequency of readmission after a procedure, helping to justify the length of a follow-up period; it might tell you the concomitant diagnostic tests so you can better plan monitoring procedures or risk mitigation; it will tell you the mean and range of age, weight, and other demographics so you can anticipate the inclusion spectrum and determine if you need to stratify for them.

A Database Family
HCUP consists of a family of databases focusing on different patient populations: inpatients by nation, inpatients by state, ambulatory (outpatient) surgery, emergency department patients, and child inpatients.

HCUP Requirements
Access to HCUP is almost free (you've already paid with your tax dollars). There is a small fee of a few hundred dollars for maintenance, you need a large server to run the data, and you need to sign a secrecy agreement. A free subset of data is on the internet for you to try it out on your own, HCUPNet.

You will receive
[x] PowerPoint slides.
[x] Knowledge of how to use HCUP databases.
[x] Knowledge of how to obtain HCUP data.
[x] Ideas for protocol design problem solving.
[x] An expert speaker.
[x] Opportunity for QnA.
[x] CEUs and certificate of attendance.

Who should attend
[x] People who design clinical trials.
[x] People who write indications for use.
[x] People who chose subject selection criteria.
[x] Clinical trial project managers.
[x] Department managers.

Presenter
Claudia A Steiner, MD, MPH, is a research medical officer with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She helps with the design, management and dissemination of HCUP. Dr. Steiner has experience with both primary and secondary data--incuding a national survey of health insurers--and administrative data. She is an expert in using these data to answer research questions.

The purchase is $425 for OnDemand access and $475 for the CD. Each attendee is eligible for 0.15 CEUs upon completing the course feedback via the link provided with the event materials. Click here to purchase.