New Opportunities for Longitudinal Studies

June 01, 2017

Through our data contribution program, FAIR Health now receives for inclusion in our FH NPIC® (National Private Insurance Claims) database an expanded array of healthcare claims information that can support a wealth of new longitudinal analyses—including studies tracking repeat admissions, course of treatment, selection of venues for care, evaluation of quality measures and more.

NPIC, our private claims repository, is the foundation for our modules that provide benchmark data by type of claim—medical/surgical, anesthesia, dental, ambulatory surgery center and allowed amounts—as well as for the broad range of custom analytics and data visualizations we create to customers’ specifications.

The expanded data cover claims for medical care, including professional services, facility services (e.g., inpatient, outpatient, home health, skilled nursing facility) and more—as well as information from dental and pharmacy claims. The expanded claims submissions include all data elements necessary for longitudinal studies, such as the full breadth of diagnosis codes both at the claim and line level, facility ICD procedure codes, CPT®/HCPCS codes, longitudinal member identifiers, basic patient demographics (gender, age) and provider NPIs.

With this robust data, FAIR Health can support analyses that track a patient’s treatment path and providers’ practice patterns over time, uncovering important information about both the type of care being delivered and its effectiveness. Our data can be used to measure trends related to diseases and conditions; identify variations in conditions and treatments in different populations, sortable by age, gender and geographic location; and perform predictive analyses. Offering a “view over time,” patient-specific claims data can be aggregated and reported at a de-identified level, allowing us to establish relationships between individual claims (points in time). These studies can reveal patterns of comorbidities and medical activities that can be linked sequentially, enabling research and analytics related to diagnoses, conditions and treatment protocols over time and geography.

For example, a health insurer could license NPIC data to analyze the de-identified claims associated with patients diagnosed with opioid abuse or dependence to better understand their migration through the healthcare system and the services accessed. This information could assist in evaluating outcomes, designing benefits and provider networks and establishing affiliation relationships.

For information about custom analytics and products FAIR Health offers to further your longitudinal analyses, contact us by e-mail at info@fairhealth.org or call us at 855-301-3247, Monday through Friday, 9 am to 6 pm ET.

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