Texas Healthcare Data The hunt for medical trivia and research

by David Orenstein free-lance writer

The essence of health care is the personal interaction between patients and their physicians and nurses, but it always occurs in a complex context of impersonal trends. Demographic trends, the bureaucratic idiosyncrasies of HMOs, and variances in hospital operations all lurk in the background of each case. Three state-run Web sites can help you and your patients take the broader world into account and put care in context with relative ease.

The Web, after all, is the best research medium when three things happen: People put useful information online, keep that data up to date, and make the facts findable. You can find a wealth of context for health care in Texas at the Texas Health Care Information Council (www.thcic.state.tx.us), the Texas Department of Insurance’s HMO profiles (www.tdi.state.tx.us/company/hmo/alpha.html), and the Texas Department of Health’s health data site (www.tdh.texas.gov/data.htm). Together, these sites offer a virtual yearbook of big trends in the state’s health care.

Certainly, there are gaps in the data—both in content and in timeliness—but if you familiarize yourself with what the sites offer, you won’t waste time on fruitless searches. On a whim, chase down some interesting medical trivia. Then, when you need to look up something relevant, you’ll know what’s available and how to find it quickly.

The THCIC exists to publicize information about hospital and HMO performance, and it does just that. Under “Publications,” visitors can find out the mortality rates at specific hospitals associated with some procedures and conditions, the top diagnoses resulting in hospital stays for various patient populations, and the performance and satisfaction rates of HMOs. Interesting findings include:

• Out of 10 hospitals in the Dallas metropolitan area in 2000, eight had mortality rates for coronary artery bypass grafts that were below the 4.2 percent state average.
• The top reason for men age 18–64 to be in Texas hospitals in January through June 1999 was back and neck procedures.

The insurance department’s HMO profiles offer an overview of facts, ranging from their premiums per member per month to the number of complaints against them. Among the interesting facts at that site is:

• Southwest Texas HMO, Inc, had 604 hospital days per 1000 enrollees in 2001, while Cigna Healthcare of Texas had 63 days per 1000 enrollees.

The TDH health data site offers information about the incidence of medical problems by region, age, and other demographic indicators. Unlike the other sites, it is more oriented toward epidemiology and less toward bureaucracy. Here you can create your own data tables and find out items including:

• Tuberculosis cases in Texas dropped from 2369 in 1995 to 1643 in 2001. Dallas County, however, saw no such trend decrease, with 276 cases in 1995 and 270 in 2001.
• The suicide rate (per 100,000) between 1990 and 1998 in Dallas County has ranged from a high of 15.7 in 1994 to 10.5 in 1998. The county tracks between 200 and 300 suicides each year.

Instant online access beats having to riffle through a pile of journals just to give your patients answers about where they fit in the state’s medical context.

David Orenstein is a technology and business writer in Silicon Valley. To learn more about a technology topic in Computing Care, e-mail him at davealli@attbi.com.