Utah Health Data Committee Meeting

Utah Health Data Committee Meeting

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Utah Department of Health, Room 114

Minutes

Members Present: Sharon Donnelly, Kevin Potts, David Purinton, Pat Richards, Vaughn Holbrook, Christopher Wood, Lynette Hansen, Keith Tintle, Lauren Florence, James Tabery, Jim VanDerslice

Members Not Present: Alan Ormsby, Bill Crim, Scott Baxter

Staff Present: Norman Thurston, Wu Xu, David Arcilesi, Keely Cofrin Allen, Charles Hawley, Jamie Martell, Mike Martin, John Morgan, Kimberly Partain McNamara, Lori Savoie

Guests: Jim Murray (SelectHealth), Heather Radcliff (Treo Solutions), Carolyn Callopy (United Healthcare), Michael Keyes (Treo Solutions), Andrew Mondo (Treo Solutions), Sherry Levers (Treo Solutions), Sheila Walsh-McDonald (UDOH), Marissa Sowards (UDOH)

1. Approval of November 12, 2013 Minutes

Kevin Potts motioned to approve the minutes from the November 12, 2013 HDC meeting. David Purinton seconded. The motion was approved unanimously.

2. Introduction of new OHCS Staff

Norman introduced the newest member of the OHCS staff. Kimberly Partain McNamara is the Senior Business Analyst for the Office of Health Care Statistics. She joined the Utah Department of Health in 2000 as a Research Consultant for the Office of Public Health Assessment, where she spent 13 years before moving to her current position. Kimberly has a Master’s Degree in Family Ecology with an emphasis in Environment and Behavior from the University of Utah, and has over 15 years of SAS experience.

3. Staff Tutorial – How can health care costs be measured using our databases?

For this meeting’s tutorial, the staff and HDC members reviewed the different measures of cost that are available in our datasets. They discussed the three main datasets where cost can be measures, with two key questions in mind: 1) How you measure cost depends on what question you want to answer, and 2) the ability to measure cost is limited by the availability of data.

Health Plan Performance Data

These data focus on the patient experience and contain very little information about resources used or payments. Rather, it takes into account services like doctor visits, hospital stays, surgeries, drugs, and other care. These cost measure would allow us to create a crude measure of health plan value by identifying health plans that achieve relatively high quality outcomes while using relatively few resources.

Facilities Data

The Utah Hospital Discharge Databases (HDDB) contains two types of summary information collected directly from the facilities providing the services, which includes inpatient, emergency department, and ambulatory/surgical. Total Billed Charges are the sum of all pre-adjudicated charges listed on the billing form, including facility charges, professional fees, and patient convenience items. Facility Charges are the sum of all charges related to using a facility.

OHCS also collects on an ‘as available’ basis, the “estimated amount due’, and ‘prior payment’ for up to three payers and the patient’s responsibility. However, these data are usually incomplete and are not currently being used in the analysis of facilities data.

All Payer Claims Data

Payers report post-adjudicated claims information. Ideally this will allow us to see the actual amount of money flowing to the providers, and to do a complete accounting of the financial cost of each encounter or service provided. The ability to parse out the financial information is dependent on the completeness of the data provided to use by the payers.

Heather Radcliff from Treo gave a short presentation on cost. A summary was included in the binder.

4. Proposed Changes to the Bylaws

Norman provided the Committee with the revised document for the bylaws, stating that when he started looking at them in December, he realized that everything, more or less, needed to be revised. He then went through and highlighted the proposed changes. Both the old version and the pending new version were provided to the HDC members for reference.

Lynette Hansen made a motion to approve the changes to the Bylaws. David Purinton seconded. Voting was unanimous in favor.

5. Subcommittee Status Reports

Each subcommittee chair gave a brief update on the status of their subcommittees. A short handout containing all the information about each subcommittee was provided in the members’ binders.

Compliance – Met on January 7th and granted an extension and an exemption request, both of which were for United Healthcare. The next thing the subcommittee wants to figure out is whether or not requests can be granted at a staff level, with more pressing things being brought to the subcommittee, and then the HDC if needed.

Data Use – The next Data Use meeting is tomorrow, January 15th. The subcommittee is putting together a more formal protocol that they will be bringing to the full committee.

Transparency – The next meeting is scheduled one week from today, on January 21st.

Payer Task Force – Reviewed the language and provided feedback for Rule 428-15 and the Data Submission Guide.

Legislative Communications – There was some concern about HB35 (summary of bill provided in binder) and the reauthorization of the Health Data Committee. The Department wants to add a 15th seat that would be dedicated to the Department of Insurance. There were mixed feelings among the committee members, especially where the neither the HDC nor the Legislative subcommittee was notified of the bill. They felt that if it concerns the Committee, it should be vetted through them first.

It was decided that the Committee needed clarification on the bill, including what the objective of the changes was. Norm agreed to follow up with Representative Dunnigan (the sponsor of the bill) and see if he would agree to meet with the Legislative Communications Subcommittee.

James Tabery motioned to request to either remove the 15th seat or meet with the Legislative Subcommittee to explain why it should be on there, on a timely basis, and recommend that the 15th seat held by the DOI be a non-voting position. Jim VanDerslice seconded. The motion passed with 11 in favor, and one abstention (Vaughn Holbrook). Kevin Potts had left the meeting and therefore didn’t vote.

6. Discussion on the 2014 HDC Retreat

Typically have the retreat in the summer. Executive committee raised question about whether we need a retreat every year, and what would be the best time of the year to hold it.

Norm will take on task of emailing members for their opinions.

7. Best Use Task Force – Discussion on the best uses of our databases to create value

Norm and Sharon met about the best use task force. Made a request to all committee members to show up today. Unfortunately there isn’t time to discuss it today.

8. Evaluation of the Meeting and Review of Action Items

Kevin will not be able to attend the March meeting, and probably won’t be able to phone in. Sharon won’t be attending in person, but could possibly attend by phone. The Committee discussed moving the meeting to March 4th from 3-5 p.m.