The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality selected Minnesota Hospital Association to be part of a two-year project that allows clinical lab data to be paired with administrative billing data.

Hospitals already submit billing data to MHA. Any hospital can be part of this new initiative by agreeing to also submit their clinical lab data. Once the new lab data and billing data are merged, a more sophisticated severity adjustment system can be applied, and hospital performance on quality and patient safety measures can be more accurately analyzed. The new merged data will also help hospitals double-check their accuracy for coding conditions present on admission.

Any hospital can participate. There is no cost to take part, other than the staff time it takes to submit the clinical lab data, which will be facilitated by the subcontractor, Michael Pine and Associates.

To sign up or obtain more information, contact Mark Sonneborn, MHA vice president, information services, at (651) 659-1423 or Joe Schindler, senior director, data and finance policy, at (651) 659-1415.

Lab Data Files and Layout Materials

• Q & A from July 15, 2008 conference call: [PDF]
• Letter to participants introducing the project's next step: "Adding Clinical Data to Administrative Data": [DOC]
• LOINC mapping tool instructions completing lab data worksheet: [DOC]
• LOINC code worksheet: [XLS]
• HL7 format for transmitting laboratory results to MHA: [DOC]
• Laboratory Results to Be Collected Electronically
  This list includes all chemistry, blood gas, and hematology laboratory tests to be collected electronically from hospitals participating in the AHRQ project: [DOC]
  

HL7 and LOINC Primers

The following presentations were given by W. Ed Hammond on Feb. 25, 2008:

• "Introduction to HL7 Standards: version 2.x," [PPT]
• "Introduction to HL7, version 3," [PPT] and
• "An Introduction to LOINC (Logical Observation Identifier Name and Codes)," [PPT]

Project Kick-Off Presentations from Jan. 15, 2008

MHA kicked off the project with an orientation event on Jan. 15, 2008 for participating hospitals. Three advisory groups were formed around hospital information technology, medical record coding and quality monitoring and improvement.

Following are presentation materials from that meeting which can give you a better understanding of the overall project:

• Background, Objectives, Details: [PDF]
• Project Overview: [PDF]
• Data Collection and Transmission: [PDF]
• Proper Use of the Present-on-Admission (POA) Modifiers: [PDF]
• The Hybrid Approach: Incremental Additions of Clinical Data to Administrative Data: [PDF]
• Potential Benefits to Participants in the Project: [PDF]