Minnesota Hospital Association

Data & Reporting

AHRQ Lab/Pharmacy Project

In 2010, the Minnesota Hospital Association was awarded a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to compare the effectiveness of alternative inpatient treatment regimens for patients with acute decompensated heart failure.

MHA will combine its administrative claims database, which contains medical claims data collected from nearly all Minnesota hospitals for more than two decades, with lab data and pharmacy data from hospitals’ electronic data repositories.

This project will create the first statewide inpatient database that combines patient level claims, laboratory and pharmacy data. The information will enable analysts to compare clinical performance and relate risk-adjusted outcomes to drug therapy without costly abstraction of medical records. If successful, this innovative approach to comparative effectiveness research could benefit patients, clinicians and hospitals throughout the nation.

For more details, contact Jaclyn Roland, director of data acquisition, MHA, 651-659-1411.