Top Volume Hospitals by DRG, ICD-9

[The data we offer, and discussed below, includes data on the top volume hospitals by DRG or ICD-9. We drive the data reports from the 100% Medicare file (a very big, unwieldy file that is impractical to work with unless you have the resources and need to work with it). This is the 2005 volume of actual claims filed at each facility. Not estimates.]

We had no idea when we started offering clinical utilization data to medical product companies seeking data in support of new product introduction, etc., that we would have such a positive response to the offer of providing the data on the top volume hospitals with claim data on the DRG or ICD-9 codes of interest. It was really overwhelming. MMD (MedMarket Diligence) looked at the types of questions being asked, and the purposes being put to the data, by the typical medical product company client -- VP, President, Director, Product manager -- and realized that while on the high end of needs ("what products should we be developing?" or "what companies should we acquire?") the questions were adequately answered by U.S. aggregate data on total volume, with trends, payer segmentation, reimbursement amounts, and the like, but on the "low" end we were not helping clients enough.

By low end, I mean answering questions about "where should I send my sales reps tomorrow?." Well, how about looking at the hospitals in any geographic territory that have the highest volume utilization, measured by patient discharges and the specific diagnoses or procedures currently or potentially using the company's products?

After we started adding this to quotes, we sudddenly realized that hospital-specific data was in very big demand.

There are a lot of other aspects to working with this data, making sense of it and delivering it the right way. In subsequent posts, I'll describe that a little further, but don't have time now.

I have two more quotes to get out before day's end.

Tags: medtech, hospitals, utilization data