Frequency: Quarterly
Measure Type: Utilization
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (Agency) (AHCA) offers a website on Florida’s health care facilities and health maintenance organizations (HMOs). AHCA uses data from the Florida Health Stat website, and the Florida Compare Care site. Both sites are now joined together and are publicly available at Florida Health Finder link. They also manage and maintain the Medicaid program that provides health care to low-income individuals and disable citizens. Their data is available to the public to inform consumers on making the right health care decisions.
Hospitals for their report includes: short term acute care, long and short term psychiatric hospitals, and long term care hospitals. The data does not account for the patient’s level of illness or the differences in each facility (e.g. patients with different diagnoses). The data is updated quarterly, but only facilities that use a four quarter data process were analyzed for this report.
AHCA has three types of health data which consumers can use to determine quality care for a facility. They offer data on: inpatient records, ambulatory (outpatient) surgery, and a quick data summary listing Florida’s annual reports. They are currently working on adding emergency department data to their reports. Once a category is chosen, there are three-search types for consumers to follow. The first step allows you to choose a diagnosis code or you can just view all the hospital discharges. The second step is to select a hospital code used for a specific medical condition (this step is not required). And the last step provides a demographic selection (e.g. age group, race, principal payer, admissions type).