What You Should Know:
– Change Healthcare announced a new online COVID-19 research database to track disease progression, treatment efficacy, for qualified public and private healthcare organizations using de-identified data to understand disease progression and improve intervention.
– Actionable insight “beyond the diagnosis” enables health researchers to better understand COVID-19 progression, intervention effectiveness, and impacts on the healthcare system.
Today Change Healthcare launched Market Insights: COVID-19 Analytic Data Sets, an online COVID-19 research environment providing consolidated, de-identified, and timely analytic data relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic for qualified public and private healthcare organizations. The online research environment combines leverages de-identified claims data, enabling researchers to move beyond test and diagnosis counts into real understanding of disease progression, intervention effectiveness, and impacts upon the healthcare system.
Use De-Identified Data to Understand Disease Progression and Improve Intervention
The remediation of COVID-19 has been hampered by limited data. Researchers need more than daily counts of diagnoses and tests to truly understand the disease. Given the complexity of COVID-19, analyses require comprehensive, timely, and statistically meaningful data.
Most COVID-19 data are limited to static reports on the number of new cases, overall cases, deaths, and geographical impact. While useful in preparing for resource allocation, it provides no insight into the disease progression and the efficacy of interventions––the type of data the medical community needs to take action.
Change Healthcare processes billions of U.S. medical and pharmacy claims every year, now including those related to COVID-19. Claims provide a more comprehensive view beyond the test or diagnosis, including other diagnoses, past care, and social determinants of health. Additionally, claims are coded by medical professionals without relying on self-reported patient data.
Enable Longitudinal Analysis
Market Insights: COVID-19 Analytic Data Sets isolates claims into three unique data sets, all of which are de-identified and contractually permission:
1. Claims with explicit COVID-19 test and diagnosis codes
The first analytic data set includes claims with an explicit SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 test or diagnosis code.
2. Claims with codes identified in the February CDC interim billing guidelines
The second analytic data set includes claims that contain billing codes specified in the interim billing guidelines issued by CDC in February 20202, indicating SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 activity.
3. Claims with respiratory management diagnosis codes
The third analytic data set includes HCPCS claims related to respiratory management which were used to code early cases of the virus.
These datasets are comprehensive, timely, and statistically meaningful for a variety of research initiatives. Each dataset includes de-identified claims containing selected tests, diagnoses, or procedures of up to four years’ history. The datasets are updated daily as new information is processed.
“COVID researchers need more comprehensive and timely data in an environment where advanced data science can be responsibly performed,” said Tim Suther, senior vice president of Data Solutions at Change Healthcare. “These data sets enable robust analysis by the country’s leading medical data scientists to understand actual disease progression, the effectiveness of various interventions, and impacts to the healthcare system overall.”
