Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC) and Human Services Research Institute (HSRI) released a new publication, Putting Health Care Data on the Map: Advancing Health Care Equity Through Enhanced Geographic Context in Health Care Administrative Datasets. This white paper explores how geocoding—assigning precise geographic latitude and longitude coordinates to patient addresses—in All Payer Claims Databases (APCDs) can enhance analyses seeking to address health care access, quality, and equity.
CIVHC uses the geocoded information in the CO APCD to overlay census-tract level information from the American Community Survey and other sources to gain insights into how social factors relate to health care use. Examples of public reports that use geocoded address include the Health Equity Analysis and the Telehealth Equity Analysis. Both interactive reports evaluate things like income, employment, education, race/ethnicity and other factors that could impact health and health outcomes.
The white paper describes how geocoding supports health analyses through:
- linkages to neighborhood-level statistics that outline the socioeconomic conditions surrounding patients
- contributing to more precise calculations of the distance and travel time between patients and healthcare facilities
- new data quality insights which can be used to identify and correct inaccuracies in patients’ residential address data.
The authors include factors to consider when choosing the optimal geocoding tool for APCD administrators, health care professionals, and analysts working with geocoded data. Some examples include:
- the cost of using the tool
- tool performance with large sets of addresses
- privacy protection capabilities
- availability of value-add data elements, such as geographic area identifiers needed for data linkages
Read the full publication on HSRI’s website: Putting Health Care Data on the Map: Advancing Health Care Equity Through Enhanced Geographic Context in Health Care Administrative Datasets.