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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2016
The need for accurate data concerning nosocomial infections has long been appreciated by infection control practitioners. Several major changes in the health delivery environment have highlighted for other care givers and managers the importance of, and indeed necessity of high-quality clinical and financial hospital information. Since 1983, the Medicare prospective payment system (PPS) has used the medical record discharge abstract as the hospital bill. This has created a need for more detailed clinical information in hospital information systems. In several states, all third-party reimbursers are using PPS variants, further strengthening this incentive. The “Agenda for Change” of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has created further pressure on hospitals to acquire information concerning the quality of care at their own facility, as well as comparative statistics from other facilities. Although trade journals extol the virtues of “good data sets,” and much academic study has been given to individual facets of data processing and handling, the practical aspects of hospital information opportunities and problems have been largely ignored. The purpose of this article is to discuss the nature of hospital data; to detail available sources of national, regional, and local hospital statistics; to delineate potential quality problems common to many types of hospital information; and to discuss difficulties with and solutions to some hospital data application problems.