Private companies fill in for NC data commission
June 1, 1997 2 minutes read
Private companies fill in for NC data commission
Three companies have moved to fill the void left by the demise of the state-operated North Carolina Medical Database Commission. They are HCIA in Baltimore, HBS International in Bellevue, WA, and Phoenix-based Intellimed.
These companies have entered the business in North Carolina after the database commission went out of business last summer. The state agency collected and published information about the utilization and cost of hospital services.
Public information about hospitals in the state will be available to researchers through the nonprofit Commission on Professional and Hospital Activities for a charge to cover costs. HBSI, primarily a software company, has signed up to collect information from ambulatory care hospitals, according to Katie Britt, HBSI’s manager of data processing. The company plans to have a standard disk of information available for $1,000 to $2,000. HBSI charges hospitals about 70 cents per patient to process the information.
HCIA has been collecting data for the North Carolina Hospital Association since 1995. The company has gotten more than 90% of North Carolina’s hospitals to sign up to gather information, says Jean Chenoweth, HCIA’s senior vice president of industry relations in Baltimore. Hospitals can choose which company to designate as their information collector.
For the 70 to 79 cents per patient that hospitals pay HCIA to collect data, they receive a free customized report comparing their performances with patients at other hospitals. Chenoweth says the first reports already have been distributed.
The company plans to release its first consumer report this fall, with semiannual reports to follow. The reports, which will be available to the public for $10 to $20, will be similar to the executive summaries the database commission released. The state charged $10 for a summary guide to hospital charges and $5 for a summary of hospital statistics.
The third private company vying for the medical information business, Intellimed, is a software company that has not yet signed up any hospitals, according to its Senior Vice President Pete Bird in Durham, NC. Bird says his company depended on the information from the state’s database for the analytical systems it sells to hospitals. He adds that Intellimed entered the data-collection field after receiving a price quote of $20,000 from HCIA for hospital data that would have cost $600 from the database commission.
Intellimed plans to compete with HCIA and others by charging hospitals 39 cents per patient to collect information. Bird says the company will charge only as much to release information as the state commission charged.
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