Average Cost Method Updates

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Date	Title	Description
11/9/2007	Webpage updated	FY06 SAS proc contents files added to "Average Cost Data."
10/20/2006	Guidebook Updated	"HERC’S Outpatient Average Cost Dataset for VA Care: Fiscal Year 2005" has been updated and is now available for download.
7/1/2006	Guidebook Updated	"HERC’s Average Cost Datasets for VA Inpatient Care 1998 - 2005" has been updated and is now available for download.
6/14/2006	Webpage Released	"Average Cost Data" is now available for viewing.
8/10/2005	Guidebook Updated	"HERC’s Average Cost Datasets for VA Inpatient Care 1998 - 2004" has been updated and is now available for download.
5/1/2004	Technical Report # 13 Released	"Comparison Between DSS National Data Extracts and HERC Average Costs: Aggregate and Person-Level Costs, FY2001" is now available for download.
4/1/2004	Errors Found within HERC Average Cost Inpatient Datasets	HERC has found two errors in the HERC average cost inpatient datasets. Error 1: Missing medical/surgical cases in the MED/SURG database Some people had medical surgical care and then were transferred to a non medical/surgical bedsection, where they remained through the end of the fiscal year. These medical/surgical cases were accidentally excluded from the MED/SURG database. We are going back to the Census data to extract these records. This affects fewer than 1000 (0.1%) cases out of almost 700,000 hospitalizations per year. This affects the MED/SURG files for 1998-2002. We are now rebuilding those files to include these cases. It does not affect the DISCHARGE dataset. Error 2: SAS error in compiling DISCHARGE dataset This error only affects non-medical surgical cases when the stay crossed fiscal years. This error is only present for the FY99-FY02 HERC discharge files. The error resulted in the exclusion of some costs. For the affected cases, the costs are lower than they should be. We are in the process of fixing the HERC average cost data and will post the new files on Austin. This error does not affect medical-surgical care, non-medical-surgical cases that were admitted and discharged in the fiscal year, or any record in the FY98 discharge file. Fixing the errors involved approximately 30,000 cases per fiscal year (~4% of the cases). We have uploaded new HERC datasets to Austin. We renamed the previous files as RMTPRD.HERC.SAS.OLD.filename. We did this so that you can, if you wish, compare the original and the corrected cost estimates.
2/1/2004	Technical Report # 10 Released	"A Comparison for Inpatient Costs from the HERC and DSS National Data Extract Datasets" is now available for download.
3/20/2003	Webpage Released	"Average Cost Method Updates" is now available for viewing.
3/19/2003	Guidebook Updated	"HERC’s Outpatient Average Cost Dataset for VA Care: Fiscal Years 1998-2001" has been updated and is now available for download. The following variable names are listed incorrectly in the previous versions HERC payment value Incorrect: NCHRG Correct: PAYMHERC Provider component of HERC payment value Incorrect: RVUCOST Correct: PAYMPROV Facility component of HERC payment value Incorrect: APCCOST Correct: PAYMFACL
8/1/2002	Inpatient Discharge Dataset Updated	HERC made some changes to the HERC average cost INPATIENT DISCHARGE dataset. These changes were made to the FY98-00 data, and they will be maintained for FY01 and onwards. In the past, the HERC average cost included a local and national total cost. The new discharge dataset includes additional variables that track cost subtotals, length of stay subtotals, DRG weight, and ICU days. The format and variables of earlier discharge datasets have been preserved. Therefore, code for analyzing older datasets should work with the new version. Subtotals are based on the following categories of care (0) Acute medicine/surgery, (1) Rehabilitation, (2) Blind rehabilitation, (3) Spinal cord injury rehabilitation, (4) Does not exist (this was surgery, but it has been combined with medicine to form category 0) (5) Psychiatry, (6) Substance abuse care, (7) Intermediate medicine, (8) Domiciliary, (9) Nursing home care, and (10) Psychosocial residential rehabilitation programs (PRRTP). New variables COSTL_0 -COSTL_10: local cost estimates for categories of care 0 -10 COSTN_0-COSTN_10: national cost estimates for categories of care 0 -1 LOS_0 -LOS_10: length of stay estimates for categories of care 0 -10 DRGWT: the diagnosis related group (DRG) weight. In cases where a stay was assigned more than one DRG weight, the corresponding observation only records the maximum DRG weight ICUDAYS: number of days in an intensive care unit The implication for this change is that you will be able to look at different cost components for a single discharge. For example, if a researcher is interested in mental health costs, he/she can now identify the mental health costs for every inpatient encounter. This is particularly helpful for those patients who receive care in many different categories during a stay. Again, note that these changes only pertain to the inpatient discharge datasets.
8/1/2002	Guidebook Updated	"HERC's Inpatient Average Cost Dataset User Guide: Fiscal Years 1998-2003" has been updated and is now available for download.