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HCA is happy to announce the successful transition of the WA-APCD program administrator role effective January 1, 2020.
HCA would like to acknowledge the Office of Financial Management (OFM) with great gratitude for their collaboration, team effort, and guidance provided to HCA during the changeover. Thank you!
Under the new administration, the WA-APCD program has been busy these first two quarters of 2020! The WA-APCD accomplished the following:
- Began accepting data inquiries and requests
- Provided new DUAs
- Updated wahealthcarecompare.com to reflect program changes
- Hired the WA-APCD Program Manager – Lorie Geryk
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Onpoint Health Data and Forum One subcontract extensions
- Convened the Data Release Advisory and the Data Policy Advisory WA-APCD committees
The WA-APCD is always looking forward to improve the experience for all stakeholders. There will be a few changes to look for this year:
- Revised data product fee schedule
- Washington HealthCareCompare data release website renovation (which will include price calculator provided on the website for data requests!)
- New rule making activities
- Website refresh to include 2019 service data
- Interagency Coordinating Committee Meetings
The WA-APCD would like to thank everyone that has been involved and has interacted with our new team. Thank you for your patience, your work with the WA-APCD, and for all the work you do to better the health of Washington residents.
 The WA-APCD website wahealthcarecompare.com received recognition of distinction for excellence in the ‘Website for Health’ category in the Communicator Awards! The Communicator Awards is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts, an invitation-only group consisting of top-tier professionals from acclaimed media, communications, advertising, creative and marketing firms.
The website allows Washington consumers to price-shop for common procedures and offers quality information for primary care, hospitals, and medical facilities.
As a wide-reaching source of information on the cost and utilization of care across the healthcare system, APCDs can provide valuable information on a number of fronts in the fight against COVID-19. They can help identify populations at risk of serious illness from COVID-19 due to pre-existing conditions and populations at risk of other complications due to challenges simply accessing regular healthcare during this time. Onpoint has been working with our state partners to provide baseline data on the number and prevalence of patients who have respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, cancers, and other health conditions that may make them more susceptible to hospitalization from COVID-19 to help states in their immediate resource-planning and modeling efforts. As COVID-19 claims begin to be processed and reported by payers to APCDs, this baseline health data will be complemented by data identifying COVID-19-related tests, diagnoses, hospitalizations, and other outcomes such as ventilator use. This data will enable policymakers and researchers to evaluate the direct impact of COVID-19 and local and state responses. It will provide information on the cost of care for this disease and outcomes by location and treatment regimens and will identify risk factors that may make individuals more susceptible to serious outcomes. Additionally, APCDs will be useful to enhancing knowledge regarding risk factors for serious illness due to COVID-19 by evaluating the relationships between demographic factors, geography, pre-existing conditions, medications, and hospitalizations for COVID-19. APCDs also will be key to evaluating many questions regarding the indirect effects of COVID-19 across the healthcare system, including the areas of deferred care, medication compliance, efficacy of telemedicine, medication compliance, declines in revenue and billing for rural hospitals and other providers, mental health and substance use disorder treatments, and impacts on quality measures.
WA DOH user
Amy D. Sullivan, PhD, MPH
Senior Epidemiologist
Prevention and Community Health Division
Washington Department of Health
“My work with the APCD has focused on public health surveillance for chronic disease, and support for our universal developmental screening program. For diabetes and heart disease surveillance, we originally looked at the basic the distribution of these conditions using the OnPoint added chronic disease flags. We are now delving deeper into public health surveillance case definitions, in support of a CDC-funded National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) project to improve chronic disease surveillance nationally. While this overall project is based on a different data source, the APCD provides information for assessing how case definition and data source affect our understanding of disease prevalence in a population under care.
“The developmental screening project relates to the American Academy of Pediatrics Bright Futures guidance for developmental screening. This project uses the Bright Futures billing code guide to identify developmental screening in children under three years old; assess the timing of developmental screenings; and look at factors that might affect timely receipt of screening. Information from this project will support data-driven decision-making for the DOH Prevention and Community Health Division team that is working to strengthen universal developmental screening in the state.”
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