Vermont Uniform Hospital Discharge Data

General description

1. Database primary purpose - To support analyses of topics as hospital utilization patterns and market shares, the patient care continuum, comparative charges, and outcomes in acute care hospitals, and preventable hospitalizations.
2. Overall data type - Health outcomes
3. Dataset type - Cross-sectional
4. Data source - Hospital discharge reports
5. Data level - Patient level
6. Geographic location of the data collection sites - Vermont - USA
7. Sponsor, manager, or home institution - Vermont Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB) administers the program and the Vermont Department of Health manages the data set under an agreement with the Green Mountain Care Board
8. Date range - 2009 - 2018
9. Geolocation data - State of Residence, Hospital Service Areas
10. Hospital identifiers - Hospital name
11. Longitudinal tracking - Track hospitals using hospital name
12. Financial variables - Principal payment source, bill type, total charges
13. Clinical areas of interest - all
14. Number of records - All 14 of Vermont's general acute care hospitals currently contribute records for Vermont residents and non-residents to the Vermont Uniform Hospital Discharge Data System.
15. Variables that are uniquely present in this dataset - Vermont inpatient discharge data, outpatient procedures and services data, and emergency department data, including (1) case-specific diagnostic discharge data, (2) some socio-demographic characteristics of the patient, (3) medical reason for the admission, (4) treatment and services provided to the patient, (5) duration and status of the patient's stay in the hospital, and (6) full, undiscounted total and service-specific charges billed by the hospital

Applicable methods

1. Association analysis such as multivariable logistic regression (1, 2), linear regression (3)
2. Causal models (4)
3. Machine learning (5, 6)
4. Propensity score (7, 8)
5. Exploratory analysis (9, 10)
6. Sensitivity analysis (11)

Data dictionary

To access the Vermont Uniform Hospital Discharge data dictionary, click here

Variable categories

1. Patient demographics (e.g., age group, sex)
2. Hospital discharge records (e.g., discharge status, patient days, emergency room)
3. Charges (i.e., total charges)
4. Diagnosis (e.g., admitting, principal and "other" diagnosis code)
5. Procedures (e.g., principal and "other" procedures, ambulatory surgery)

Linkage to other datasets

• Linkages can be established for any dataset that might have hospital identifiers (i.e., name)