State and Government Administrative Databases

Abstract

The availability of large state and federally run administrative health-care databases provides potentially comprehensive population-wide information that can dramatically impact both medical and health-policy decisionmaking. Specific opportunities and important limitations exist with all administrative databases based on what information is collected and how reliably specific data elements are reported. Access to patient identifiable-level information can be critical for certain long-term outcome studies but can be difficult (although not impossible) due to patient privacy protections, while more easily available de-identified information can provide important insights that may be more than sufficient for some short-term operative or in-hospital outcome questions.The first section of this paper by Sarah K. Meier and Benjamin D. Pollock discusses Medicare and the different data files available to health-care researchers. They describe what is and is not generally available from even the most granular Medicare Standard Analytic Files, and provide an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Medicare administrative data as well as the resulting best and inappropriate uses of these data.

Rates of Registry Research Have Increased in Podium and Poster Presentations at the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons

“…In this age of big data, these data samples can be divided into national databases and registries. Nationwide databases tend to sample US institutions to capture short-term information on hospitalization and the early postoperative period [ 13 ]. While these data sets are good for evaluating the performance of individual surgical procedures and inpatient stays, there is a lack of granularity [ 14 ].…”

Incidence and Clinical Risk Factors of Post-Operative Complications following Primary Total Hip Arthroplasty: A 10-Year Population-Based Cohort Study

“…Comorbidities, post-operative complications, and post-operative comorbidities were determined based on prespecified diagnosis codes after the index THA using International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes between 2006 and 2015 (See Appendix A for procedure code 81.51 used to identify patients who underwent THA). This SID database contains 100% of inpatient procedures of individual states and has been increasingly used in orthopedic research in recent decades [ 10 ]. The SID comprises a set of longitudinal state-specific databases, consisting of over 2.1 million observations of patients within the same state–year combinations that contain information on all inpatient stays in a given state and year.…”

An Epidemiological Look into Disparities in Merkel Cell Carcinoma Hospitalizations in the United States

“…The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) Database is the largest publicly available inpatient care database that has federal-state partnership with 48 states and the District of Columbia. The NIS hold an estimated 20% of sample discharges of all states and hospitals in the United States covering more than 97% percent of the US population [8,9].In utilizing a large national database that includes all-payer inpatient data we are able to explore the sociodemographics of MCC without limitation of patient distribution and socioeconomic status. This study reports the national epidemiological data on MCC in the United States from 2011 to 2020 and evaluates sociodemographic variables that in uence MCC-related hospital prevalence and mortality rates.…”