Put Data to Use
This tool provides users the ability to extract data and interact with a dashboard that uses data from multiple federal, publicly available datasets for population health planning. The toolkit also provides users with educational resources about working with the datasets in Microsoft Excel and Tableau Public.
The purpose of this tool is to provide a web-based dashboard to educate state Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program Coordinators, state office of rural health staff, critical access hospitals, rural health networks, and other rural health stakeholders on population health data analytics.
The data included in this web-based tool are publicly available and consist of, but not limited to:
- Hospital Compare (data released July 2020)
- County Health Ranking (data released 2020)
- Dartmouth Health Atlas - Medicare Reimbursements/Enrollee (data released 2017)
- Area Health Resources File (data released 2019)
- U.S. Census, 2017 American Community Survey (data released 2019)
Note: Hospital Compare data in the Toolkit does not include data that has been suppressed due to small numbers. The Critical Access Hospital Measurement and Performance Assessment System (CAHMPAS), maintained by the Flex Monitoring Team, provides access to financial, quality, and community-benefit performance data of CAHs at the state and hospital level. Community and quality data in CAHMPAS are available to the public. Critical access hospitals (CAHs), state Flex Coordinators, and officials from the State offices of Rural Health may access detailed financial data through a password-protected site. State Flex Coordinators and CAHs already have access to their own Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement Project (MBQIP) data from quarterly reports created by the Flex Monitoring in support of FORHP.
Scenarios
The population health planning tool allows users to extract multiple data elements that are focused on specific scenarios. The scenarios focus on extracting information and analyzing the data in Microsoft Excel. The topics of the scenarios include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Diabetes Demographics
- Discharge Instructions
- Emergency Department Access
- Injury Demographics
- Patient Satisfaction
- Poverty, Preventable Stays, and Mental Health Shortage
- Social Determinants of Health
- Socioeconomic Status and Well-being
- Transportation and Health Status
- Understanding of Care and County Race
- Uninsured Rates, Behavior, and Mental Health
- Using Claims Data
Introduction Tutorial
View this brief video tutorial to learn how to use data in the Population Health Toolkit. Each scenario also includes its own tutorial video.
Benchmarks
Benchmarks provide a standard or point of reference on which data can be prepared. View this brief video to learn how national and state-level benchmarks for appropriate variables can be utilized for comparison of data available in the scenarios at the county or hospital level.
Population Health Portal - Use of Benchmarks
Limitations
Limitations apply to the population health planning tool. The data is limited to the data sets that are publicly available and permitted to be repurposed on this website. The data sets are also limited to the most recent data that has been published by the federal agencies. Finally, the scenarios that are developed and the educational materials produced are not all-encompassing. They are examples of the types of analysis that can be conducted using public data for population health planning.