Survey of Publicly Available State Health Databases

19 Pages Posted: 12 Jun 2013 Last revised: 20 Jul 2013

See all articles by Sean Hooley

Sean Hooley

Harvard University

Latanya Sweeney

Harvard University

Date Written: June 11, 2013

Abstract

We surveyed every state and the District of Columbia to see what patient specific information states release on hospital visits and how much potentially identifiable information is released in those records. Thirty-three states release hospital discharge data in some form, with varying levels of demographic information and hospital stay details such as hospital name, admission and discharge dates, diagnoses, doctors who attended to the patient, payer, and cost of the stay. We compared the level of demographic and other data to federal standards set by the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA), which states do not have to adhere to for this type of data. We found that states varied widely in whether their data was HIPAA equivalent; while 13 were equivalent (or stricter) with demographic fields only 3 of the 33 states that released data did so in a form that was HIPAA equivalent across all fields.

Keywords: Data Sharing, HIPAA, State Databases, Health Data, Hospital Discharge, Inpatient Data, Outpatient Data

JEL Classification: H1, H4, H51, H7, I1, I11, I18, K19, K23, K32, L33, O33, O38

Suggested Citation

Hooley, Sean and Sweeney, Latanya, Survey of Publicly Available State Health Databases (June 11, 2013). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2277688 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2277688

Sean Hooley

Harvard University ( email )

1737 Cambridge Street
CGIS 3rd Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Latanya Sweeney (Contact Author)

Harvard University ( email )

1737 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

HOME PAGE: http://latanyasweeney.org

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