Methods for Maintaining Longitudinal Population Health Studies
*to jump to Hospital-level race/ethnic data quality databooks, please click HERE
1. Basic Computing Environment
Organize the computer and software
Prepare the Tools and Working (Project) Environments
Basic issues with Master and Confidential Environments
TOOLS_2019.zip contains FHOP macros and related files introduced in this volume
2. Standardizing Variables Over Time
Time variables
Demographic variables
Confidential data elements
3. Preparing Master Files
Setup activities
The RDYR macro
Check longitudinal consistency
4. Special Issues with Birth and Fetal Death Files
Steps to make master files
Check longitudinal consistency
Geographic classification
Data quality
BC_FORMATS_2019.zip contains FHOP's current format library for use with birth certificate data (1989-2014)
DT_FORMATS_2018.zip contains FHOP's current format library for use with death certificate data (1980-2017)
5. Special Issues with Death Files
Steps to make master files
Check longitudinal consistency
Cause of death
Geographic classification
Data quality
6. Maintaining Hospital Formats
Structure of formats program
OSHPD facility labels
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Clinical Classification System (CCS)
Injury Classification
FHOP Surveillance Classification
OSH_FORMATS_2019.zip contains the format library FHOP currently uses for OSHPD inpatient admissions (1983-2014)
and emergency department and ambulatory care encounters (2005-2014).
DXFH2015.ZIP contains the cross-classified lists of ICD-9 diagnoses (1983-2015).
This file is the source for the formats in FORMATS.ZIP that variously classify ICD-9 diagnosis codes
PXAH2014.ZIP contains the cross-classified lists of ICD-9 procedures (1983-2014).
This file is the source for the formats in FORMATS.ZIP that variously classify ICD-9 procedure codes.
CCS did not update procedure codes in 2015.
7. Maintaining Geography Formats
The need for longitudinal geographic datasets
Standard administrative boundaries
Planning and policy geography
Data sets with geographic boundaries
8. Annual Hospital Disclosure Report
Primary hospital data sets
Preparing AHDR data
Reconciling hospital events
9. Hospital Crosswalk
Why crosswalk is needed
Crosswalk methods and results
Crosswalk validation
Example: Hospital-level race/ethnic data quality
The following files have longitudinal hospital-level results
Birth Certificate
Patient Discharge
Emergency Department
10. Population Data Sets
Department of Finance
National Center for Health Statistics
US Census
Issues and Decisions to be made on Collecting, Coding
and Reporting Race and Ethnicity for Public Health Indicators
The “Race/Ethnicity Guidelines”, approved in 2003 by the California Directors of Public Health (CDPH) and Health and Human Services (CHHS) for use by all programs, explicitly did not address how to handle multi-race coding for trend analysis. Further, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) had not yet provided guidance on what to do when the same groups are not available over time or there is a mismatch between groups in the numerator and denominator. This document discusses issues related to developing a standardized approach to coding and reporting race and ethnicity for data sets maintained by CDPH. The focus is using these to explore race/ethnic differences in indicators of health status and outcomes over time. (September 2011).
Creating Longitudinal Hospital-Level Data Sets
Per California regulations, hospital licenses are based on a given physical location. When hospitals disappear from various data files the explanation is not readily apparent. We must determine whether it is because the facility closed, merged, converted to consolidated reporting, or moved, resulting in a new license ID. Yet another possibility is that a new license ID was assigned to a facility at the same location. We developed a series of decision rules to resolve such issues in a longitudinally consistent manner. These included rules to handle changes in hospital identifiers, physical location, consolidated data reporting, ownership, organizational type, and structural capacity. This document provides a full discussion of the issues encountered in creating the hospital-level data sets, their resolution, and the creation of related analysis data sets and variables. (June 2004)
Methods to Prepare Hospital Discharge Data
OSHPD distributes Patient Discharge Data (PDD) to qualified researchers such as the Family Health Outcomes Project (FHOP). The FHOP human subjects protocols permit us to have the confidential PDD, for all discharges and ages, from 1983 forward. Currently we have processed all years through 2000 and are about to start with the 2001 and 2002 files. This document presents an overview of the methods we developed to create the core files we use as the source for the different PDD-based research and data products that FHOP distributes. (June 2004)
