Mandatory Reporting
Hospital financials
Hospitals are required by law to collect hospital-specific financial, utilization, staffing and services data. Except for federal hospitals, all hospitals are required to complete a Hospital Annual Report (HAR) and submit copies of their audited financial statements and Medicare cost report to the Minnesota Department of Health. A database of key hospital indicators is maintained for comparative reporting. There are more than 500 data elements in the database.
Community benefit activities
Minnesota legislation passed in 2007 established mandatory community benefit reporting. On the federal level, a new effort to collect community benefit information resulted in the creation of Schedule H, part of the IRS Form 990. A new federal law requires that hospitals must complete a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) at least every three years with input from the broader community, including public health experts.
Adverse Health Events reporting
Hospitals are required to report any of 29 types of adverse health events defined by the National Quality Forum. Initiated by the Minnesota Hospital Association and the Minnesota Department of Health and created through state legislation, our system is the first in the nation to champion this important improvement in how we track and report the most serious medical errors. Since the law’s inception, many other states have followed Minnesota’s lead by adopting some form of adverse health-event reporting. The learnings from these reports result in continuous safety improvement at every hospital.
In addition, hospitals are submitting data on infections and strokes, working with the state to improve health care quality while striving to create a uniform approach to quality measurement in Minnesota.
Who collects all of this data?
Under an agreement with the Minnesota Department of Health, MHA serves as the voluntary, nonprofit reporting organization for the collection of hospital-specific comparative data. See Health Care Cost Information System Reports.
Adverse health event data is collected through the MHA Patient Safety Registry. Through the Registry, hospitals can learn from the reporting of events and their root causes.
What data is available publicly?
With the exception of administrative cost data, all hospital-specific comparative data information is public. For more information about hospital-specific comparative data, complete our contact form.