AHRQ Preventable Hospitalization Costs, a county level mapping tool

The AHRQ Preventable Hospitalization Costs (PHC) is a software program that 1) maps selected AHRQ Quality Indicators (QIs) for a State, by county, and 2) estimates the cost savings associated with reducing the level of potentially avoidable hospitalizations. The tool assists health care decisionmakers in identifying communities for future interventions, such as improving preventive and primary care services or improving patient safety, and tracking the impact of such interventions over time. By overlaying residence data, the program shows where interventions can have the biggest impact for certain health plan enrollees or other target populations.

The PHC uses hospital discharge records as the basis to calculate the county level rates of each of the area-level indicators in two of the AHRQ QI modules: the Prevention Quality Indicators and Pediatric Quality Indicators.

This tool will:

• Produce maps displaying the county-level QI rates.
• Overlay user-defined population data, assuming the user can supply these additional datasets. This tool can calculate the expected cost savings for a 10- to 50-percent reduction in cases for each county. With this function, the user supplies the supplementary charge information for inputted discharge records.
• Display county-level rates and cost-reduction data in a worksheet format.

The PHC was designed to help health care policymakers and administrators analyze their own hospital inpatient discharge data in order to assess the magnitude of problems they face and identify interventions to reduce potentially preventable hospitalizations and medical errors. The tool would also be useful for employers, employer coalitions, Medicaid programs, health departments, hospitals, health systems, health plans, and researchers interested in population-based quality measures.
 

Download the SAS Preventable Hospitalization Costs Mapping Tool

• PHC SAS Software, Zipped

• PHC Documentation, PDF Format

Download the Windows Preventable Hospitalization Costs Mapping Tool

• Executable Setup File for Office 2003 42 MB

• Executable Setup File for Office 2007 44 MB

• Windows Mapping Tool Tech Instructions