Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative

APCD Data Dictionary: Claims-Based Data

Commercial Carriers and Arkansas Medicaid

December 2021

Version 8.0.2021

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Overview

Access to timely, accurate, and relevant data is essential to improving quality, mitigating costs, and promoting transparency and efficiency in the healthcare delivery system. Pursuant to the Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative of 2015,[1] the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI), or the “Administrator,” is hosting a comprehensive all-payer claims database (APCD) on behalf of the Arkansas Insurance Department (AID) that houses member enrollment data, medical claims, pharmacy claims, dental claims, and provider data. As noted in AID Rule 100 (the “Rule”), the Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative — Arkansas APCD Data Submission Guide (DSG) establishes file requirements from which submitting entities develop data files for voluntary or mandatory data submission.

Arkansas APCD Data Dictionary

Introduction

This document, the Arkansas APCD Data Dictionary, provides data element definitions, data types, formats, and other information about fields available to the data requester. It is developed from the Arkansas APCD DSG and also contains additional or replacement fields for analytic use.

This data dictionary contains every field available for selection by data requesters. Because fields for every data request may differ, this data dictionary may contain more data fields than those in the output dataset.

Data file layouts, data element descriptions, and other relevant data submission information for the data categories are provided in the Arkansas APCD Data Layouts and Definitions section. Each data element description includes the data element definition, associated values, value definitions, format, data type, coverage expectation, and required/optional indicators.

The dataset formats in the Arkansas APCD Data Layouts and Definitions section created by the APCD Administrator were developed in compliance with the Act and were identified after careful review of APCD layouts used in other states, APCD Council guidance, and the APCD Council’s Core Set of Data Elements.[2] The Administrator selected formats and variables that (1) conform to the minimum standard APCD core layout provided by the APCD Council; (2) include the data elements required for health system analytics and consumer data reporting; and (3) facilitate healthcare data transparency in Arkansas.

Each data element is represented by a Data Element Identifier (Data Element ID) comprised of the two-character data category abbreviation — ME, MC, PC, DC, PV, LU — and a three or more character value such as 001, 025A, 161A, and 058EA. Data elements are referred to by their Data Element ID throughout the DSG (e.g., ME001, MC001, ME161A, and MC058EA). This naming convention aligns with standards defined by the United States Health Information Knowledgebase.[3]

Arkansas APCD Data Submission Guide

The APCD Data Dictionary is based on data submission requirements documented in the Arkansas APCD DSG located here: https://www.arkansasapcd.net/Resources/DataSubmissionGuideResources/.

Use the latest version posted.

[1] Act 1233 of 2015.

[2] “APCD Medical Data Reporting: Proposed Core Set of Data Elements for Data Submission.” APCD Council, UNH, and NAHDO, October 2011. Available at: http://www.apcdcouncil.org/sites/apcdcouncil.org/files/media/apcd_council_core_data_elements_5-10-12.pdf.

[3] “United States Health Information Knowledgebase.” Accessed at: http://ushik.org/mdr/portals.