Changes to the Healthcare Facilities DSG

OHCS proposes to move forward with a major change in the Utah Healthcare Facility Data Submission Guide (DSG) going into effect for 2018 data. This would be the first major overhaul of the DSG since the beginning of data collection over 20 years ago.

Rationale for a Major Change:

The structure of the current DSG (version 1) has limitations on both the ability to submit data and on our ability to easily verify and incorporate the data. There are three separate protocols that correspond to inpatient, ambulatory surgery/diagnostics and emergency room encounters. Due to complexities and rigidities of those structures, we feel that we are missing depth in the data, such as depth of diagnoses and the range of procedures.

In addition, the fixed width format creates a significant amount of work for programmers for each submission and is difficult to monitor for compliance. When errors are detected, tracing the root cause is time-consuming.

Key Features of the Changes:

  1. Move from a fixed width to a delimited format - This will allow both the submitter and the receiver to open the file in Excel and review the raw content of any particular field.
  2. Create a single format for all data - Facilities will be able to submit all data in a single pull if they wish. The new format follows existing industry standards to minimize the need to translate data from one format to another.
  3. Changing from wide format to long format - For ambulatory data, our current format restricts the number of procedures based on the width of the file. By moving to a long format, there will be no limitations on the number of procedures reported for each encounter.
  4. Various fixes and updates - Other changes are designed to reduce errors in the data, such as by specifying the inclusion of decimals in dollar amounts. This will speed up the processing and facilitate quality controls.

Impact on Data Suppliers:

We recognize that any change in a DSG requires some programming time and cost on data suppliers. However, we feel that once these changes are in place, it will decrease the burden on the suppliers and programmers by reducing the need for error tracing, quality control, and resubmission. It will also allow smaller facilities to use a simple Excel template that is more familiar to less sophisticated users and could eliminate the need for programmers in some cases.