HIM 4222 - Unit 2 Assignment: Data Dictionary Purpose: Construct a data dictionary to model a healthcare database collection tool. Background: At the time of discharge, data is collected from patie

HIM 4222 – More Health care databases (extra credit - 10 points)

Purpose: To gain additional knowledge and experience with public databases and become aware of the benefits and power of this kind of data.

  1. Care Compare

  • Scroll down and click on the picture of a hospital.

  • Type in your zip code and click Search.

  • Click on the compare button by the facility you wish to compare.

  • Click two or three hospitals and click Compare in the upper, right area of your screen. Notice all the tabs you can look at and compare.

  • Click on the Patient Survey Rating header and read the description of this topic. Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) is a national, standardized survey of hospital patients about their experiences during a recent inpatient hospital stay.

  • Scroll down a little and see all the details of what questions are asked, the results and also the national average.

  • What can the consumer learn here? How would this be helpful for the typical consumer?

  1. Now go back to the main page: Care Compare

  • At the top/right of the screen, click Providers & Services

  • Click Compare procedure costs.

  • What procedure did you choose and what did you find? Was the tool easy to use?

  1. Healthgrades

You can find a doctor, dentist or hospital.

Scenario: You need a plastic surgeon to fix your index finger that was nearly cut off while cooking dinner last night.

Who do you pick? Why?

Notice all of the elements that are for the public to see and compare.
For example: Experience (where you can even have information on a background check) or patient satisfaction. Why would a consumer be interested in this type of information? How could having this online help/hurt a provider?




  1. CDC Wonder

What does this site do?

Under Wonder Systems>Wonder Online Databases – select Births.

Read the introduction to this screen – Where is the information derived from?

Select Natality from 2007-2019.

Read this screen and select I agree……

Select items from the boxes 1-5 – thinking what would I want to know about births? How many in my state? How many mothers used tobacco while pregnant? How many mothers across all states experienced eclampsia – what age were they?

What were the results you found?

Once you have results, notice the tabs at the top – Results/Map/Chart. Why would you want to have this visualization option?


Under those tabs, see more choices. Click on “Other Data Access” – Wow – look at how much data you can get to!

  1. Or this last one: https://www.medicare.gov/procedure-price-lookup/

where you can look up the cost of an upcoming procedure!


This is the end of the exploration - I hope you enjoyed the experience.