Additional Inpatient Hospital Discharge Data Now Available on Health Data NY

Albany, N.Y. (Sept. 25, 2013 – The New York State Department of Health (DOH) announced today the release of new hospital discharge data on its Health Data NY website (health.data.ny.gov), providing New Yorkers with 24/7 access to important health information about inpatient treatment in New York State hospitals.

"When public health partners, academia, researchers, or others are asked what type of health data they would like access to in order to support research and analysis, they request hospital discharge data," said State Health Commissioner Nirav R. Shah, M.D., M.P.H. "One of the primary goals of Health Data NY is to be responsive to the health informational needs of New Yorkers, and releasing this data publicly for the first time is an example of how we are listening to New Yorkers and putting valuable data into their hands for use and innovation."

The Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative (SPARCS) Inpatient De-IdentifiedData for 2011, which is now available today on Health Data NY, contains inpatient hospital discharge level detail on patient characteristics, diagnoses, treatments, services and source of payment for all hospitals in New York State. It is important to note that this data does not contain health information that is protected under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This data expands upon previous summarized SPARCS data that was published on Health Data NY in March. The data being released today contain discharge level information on patient care.

The Health Data NY site is the only known open data site in the United States devoted solely to state health data accompanied by targeted public health messaging, extensive metadata and customized visualizations. Health Data NY not only provides raw data, but allows health care providers, researchers, legislators, advocates, academics, and the general public to analyze and download valuable health data in a variety of formats; review comprehensive metadata; create visualizations of the data; embed data and visualizations into their respective web sites with automatic refreshes from health.data.ny.gov; utilize Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to build mobile applications; and share data and visualizations through popular social media tools like Twitter and Facebook.

Health Data NY supports Governor Cuomo's OPEN NY initiative and its respective state data transparency website, open.ny.gov. Open.ny.gov provides user-friendly, one-stop access to data from New York State agencies, localities, and the federal government. All health data available on Health Data NY is also accessible at open.ny.gov, as well as the federal government's health open data site, HealthData.gov.