Development of an Integrated Ambulatory Care Database and Analysis System

This report describes the development of an integrated, comprehensive system for analysis of ambulatory care practices. The system includes a network of hospital-based and community-based physician practices in the Rochester, New York area. After coding and data entry, routine clinical information from network practices, including demographics, diagnoses, and procedures, is submitted in computer readable form to be integrated with inpatient, emergency department, and outpatient information extracted from a hospital information system. This integrated information is transformed into patient-related and encounter-related SAS files ready for reporting and analysis. This system provides a research laboratory for examination of ambulatory care practices that combines features of both claims-based databases and cooperative practice networks.