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| <p><strong>A Tale of Two Agencies: The Quest for Developing a Health Data Sharing Agreement: Executive Summary</strong></p> |
| <p>Greg Kearney, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., R.S.</p> |
| <p>Hospital data can be used by epidemiologists and public health officials to monitor the health status of a community and to perform disease surveillance. Although primarily used for medical billing purposes, hospital data can serve as a rich source of health information providing valuable insight for evaluating selected chronic and acute diseases, and establishing and reporting health trends in the population.</p> |
| <p>In Florida, the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) collects and manages all hospital data for the entire state. Hospital data is considered confidential, and to receive this data, all applicants, including the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) must submit an annual “request for data” application. From a state health department’s perspective, requesting this data has proven to be a repetitive, lengthy and time consuming process. This leadership project utilizes methods focused on recognizing, describing and identifying barriers in an attempt to facilitate a process to overcome a cumbersome, annual renewal application process. The goal is to work towards developing a multi-year data sharing agreement (DSA) between the Florida Department of Health and the Florida, Agency for Health Care Administration.</p> |
| <p>The “shifting the burden” and “fixes that backfire” archetypes were selected, a casual loop developed, role-playing dialogue was constructed and an action plan developed. Other methods included interviews with data administrators and attorneys among the two agencies and internal meetings with stakeholders. </p> |
| <p>The short term benefits include, an interagency application being developed, and a January 2008 meeting scheduled with the new AHCA leadership to propose a DSA. As a result of this project, FDOH senior leadership is now cognizant of the situation and intends to pursue this idea. The EPHLI has improved my knowledge and abilities to strategize and frame the discussions for FDOH with AHCA for enabling a continuing this dialogue into 2008. In addition, this project has improved my negotiation approaches and skills for collaborating with other agencies. Long term, these AHCA negotiations may prove to have long lasting benefits to the Division of Environmental Health as well as other Divisions within the Florida Department of Health. </p> |
| <p>A policy determination has yet to be made of why a DSA can not be developed, however the recent change of leadership at AHCA may prove to be an opportunity for securing a DSA. Also, the National Association of Health Data Organization had developed a national-level work group to develop a uniform DSA that can be used by all states. Florida has been participating in these efforts, which may prove beneficial not only to Florida, but at the national level.</p> |
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| <p>2007–2008 Fellow Project National Environmental Public Health Leadership Institute PAGE 1</p> |
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