Penn State University Libraries - HPA 556: Strategy Development in Health Services Organization

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Links to various data sources including accessibility of care, healthcare disparities, healthcare quality, healthcare spending, healthcare use, hospitalizations, and data by state and payer type.

America’s Health Insurance Plans Center for Policy and Research
Strategic thinking branch of America’s Health Insurance Plans with mission to advance ideas, research, and policy solutions to help Americans build a 21st Century health system through research on interrelated issues of health care quality, cost and access, and insurance markets.

American Hospital Association (AHA)

• Research and Trends
  Provides up-to-date information on both health and hospital trends with data from various sources including the AHA Annual Survey, made available through their TrendWatch chart book.

• Quality and Patient Safety
  Features tools, articles and other resources to suppose hospitals to achieve better patient outcomes, enhanced safety, increased satisfaction, and improved operational and financial performance.

• AHA Search Engine
  Search tool provided by the American Hospital Association with hospital information organized by specific areas of interest.

American Nursing Association, The National Database
The National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI), a repository for nursing-sensitive indicators, is a program of NCNQ [National Cenger for Nursing Quality]. NDNQI is the only database containing data collected at the nursing unit level.

County Health Rankings
An interactive site that allows comparison of health outcome and health factor rankings by county and state for all counties in the United States.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics
A wide variety of data related to the health status of Americans, designed to monitor trends in health status and delivery of Americans to guide policy making and implementation.

Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services [CMS]

• CMS Research, Statistic, Data and Systems
  Official site of Medicare/Medicaid (and SCHIP) including data on provider type, regulations and guidance, research and statistics, outreach and education programs.

• Quality Initiatives
  For Home Health, Hospital, Nursing Home, and End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)

Center for Studying Health System Change, HSC Data
Interactive system that allows user to obtain results for a variety of topics from the CTS and Health Tracking Household and Physician Surveys.

Family Voices
Data and research related to children’s health and healthcare issues. Family-to-Family Health Information Centers help families of children and youth with special health care needs and the professionals who serve them.

Medical Group Management Association
Benchmarking tools used to measure medical practice and comparing it to similar organizations (a tool to identify problems and opportunities for improvement).

National Committee for Quality Assurance
The Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) is a tool used by more than 90 percent of America's health plans to measure performance on important dimensions of care and service.

National Quality Forum
Performance guidelines and assessment tools used by hospitals, healthcare systems, and government agencies (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) for public reporting of performance and quality improvement research, healthcare processes, outcomes, patient perceptions, and organizational structures/systems associated with the provision of high-quality healthcare.

Pennsylvania Department of Health, Health Statistics and Research
Health statistics for PA residents on vital health statistics, chronic, behavioral, and communicable diseases, health facilities, minority health, community health assessment data and links to other state and federal agencies reporting similar data.

Press Ganey, Research and Analysis
Health care consulting company with research tools on Emergency Department resources, Pulse Reports, ROI Resources, and white papers.

The Commonwealth Fund, A Private Foundation Working Toward a High Performance Health System
Links to Commonwealth Fund charts (ChartCart), International Health Policy Center, Performance Snapshots, State Date Center, and Child Health System Performance for comparing and tracking health performance.

The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council
An independent state agency responsible for addressing the problem of escalating health costs and increasing access for all citizens regardless of ability to pay, links to past and current hospital performance reports and quality measurements for Pennsylvania facilities.

The Joint Commission
Provides data on a variety of measures from over 3,000 Joint Commission accredited hospitals and provides a broad picture of quality and safety performance.

U.S. Census Bureau

• Data Tools
  Interactive tools such as: American Factfinder, CenStats, online mapping tools, research programs from the Center for Economic Studies, etc.. Also provides software to download [e.g., CS Pro, and IMPS software].

• Health Insurance
  Data collected by the U.S. census related to health insurance and health access. Also produces valuable data related to the population of an area, including demographic and economic statistics that are valuable to health care administrators.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

• Health Resources and Services Administration [HRSA], Data and Statistics
  HRSA provides data and statistics focused on the uninsured, underserved, and special needs populations and on HRSA programs, including primary care shortage areas, community health centers, and the National Health Service Corps.

• Health Resources and Services Administration, Health Professions
  HRSA Health Professions includes data related to grants and cooperative agreements related to improving the health workforce; current research, tracking tools, and trend analysis of the state of the current health workforce; and health professional shortage area data.

U.S. Department of Labor
Contains information on unemployment rates, occupation wages, and various labor regulations.

U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Health Services Research and Public Health Information Programs
Data sources related to access, quality, and cost provided by the Health Services Research Division of the National Library of Medicine.