Vizient (formerly UHC) Database: Vizient is a company that collects clinical, administrative, and financial data for individual patients from over 200 academic and community hospitals to provide benchmark measures on healthcare resource utilization. Because of the rich data about teaching hospitals, this database is especially used to study care in academic centers. Data is available for adult, pediatric, and neonatal patients. You can easily identify UCSF patients and compare UCSF outcomes with other hospitals across the United States.
Vizient link: https://www.vizientinc.com/
Vizient Pro Tip: Look in the support files to determine which variables are consistently reported across all hospitals. More detailed information is released for UCSF patients compared to other patients from other hospitals in the database. You can also use the online report builder to quickly and easily compare UCSF outcomes with other hospitals of your choice.
Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) administrative data: Run by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the HCUP data is a compilation of many state-level databases, such as hospital discharges from Florida or emergency room visits in California. In some states, record linkage files are available that allow you to see if a patient has been readmitted to a hospital or had an emergency room return visit.
HCUP Link: https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/databases.jsp
HCUP Pro Tip: Because there are no outpatient claims, it can be hard to know all of a patients’ diagnoses for risk adjustment or risk stratification.
