Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative Expands to Include New Data Sets

Enabled by a 2015 state law creating the Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative, the Arkansas All-Payer Claims Database (APCD) now has several new types of data available to supplement healthcare claims and enrollment data.

For the first time, the following datasets (data begin with January 2013 unless otherwise stated) are available when requested in combination with other data from the Arkansas APCD:

• birth and death certificate data through 2017

• inpatient hospital discharge data and emergency department data for uninsured or self-paying patients through 2017

• Arkansas Central Cancer Registry data through 2015

• medical marijuana cardholder data from 2018 and 2019

• Arkansas workers’ compensation data through 2018

Arkansas workers’ compensation data is also available through 2018, and health insurance claims data has been updated through 2018. For an overview of what is available, see this infographic.

The database is a key resource for pulling back the curtain on healthcare quality and prices. State agencies, academic researchers, analytic groups, and private industry are using the Arkansas APCD to assess healthcare utilization, quality, and price information. Web-based tools to engage individual consumers and employers, such as the healthcare cost tool My Medical Shopper, have used data from the Arkansas APCD to enable medical procedure price comparisons between facilities in any Arkansas ZIP code.

Other uses of the Arkansas APCD include analyses of smoking-attributable costs to Arkansas’s Medicaid program, Medicaid expansion in Arkansas, infant mortality, EpiPen costs, and prevalence of breast cancer.

The Arkansas APCD is available for one-time-use data requests or multi-use subscriptions. The data request process and pricing can be found on the Arkansas APCD website, arkansasapcd.net. Social media posts about the Arkansas APCD can be found on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #ARAPCD.

The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement administers the Arkansas APCD with oversight from the Arkansas Insurance Department. Data publicly released from the APCD do not include direct personal identifiers.

Arkansas is one of 16 states that support APCDs, indicating the growing interest in healthcare information transparency. More information about state APCDs can be found at the APCD Council website.