Healthcare Data Analytics and Statistical Products (HDASP)

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) offers a range of data resources and data analyses help decision makers understand healthcare trends and identify opportunities for improvement. Through the Healthcare Data Analytics and Statistical Products project, AIR supports AHRQ in increasing the utility of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), and National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report (NHQDR). The project’s goal is to develop data and statistical products, including public use files (PUFs), to expand and diversify how data can be applied for research and healthcare decision making.

For the project, AIR produces, stores, maintains, updates, provides quality assurance and data validation, and generally manages large healthcare datasets and analytic files. We are responsible for producing four MEPS PUFs annually and analysis for and production of the HCUPnet Query tool. In support of 20-plus concurrent recurring and ad hoc requests, AIR provides extensive programming and data analyses, including utilizing de-identification methods to produce PUFs, benchmarking, trend analysis, regression, and imputation in various statistical software programs—for example, SAS, Stata, SPSS and R.

The AIR team created and manages AWS Cloud environments for data processing and web postings. Website maintenance includes posting PUFs, Research Findings, and Stats Briefs. We also support the MEPS biannual workshops. Additionally, as part of this contract, AIR supports AHRQ in producing the NHQDR, a Congressionally mandated report, and the NHQDR web tool, which includes national and state views of key quality and disparities data in comparative dashboards. AIR also manages the AHRQ Data Center, which handles requests from external researchers to use AHRQ data for academic or private-sector research.