Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970506181129.006bbc6c@osf1.gmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 18:11:29 -0400
To: MedSoc@csf.colorado.edu
From: "Jeanne A.B. Calabro" <jcalabro@osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: research help for Canadian colleague
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A better reservoir of data regarding proportion of payment source would be
the CDC's Center for Health Statistics, which gathers data from each state
reporting agency, and reports in tables downloadable from its WWW stie.
This data is broken down by type of hospital, by state, and aggregated into
national data as well. If however, you want descriptive data for each
emergency room or each hospital, the state or national-level data is not
specific enough, because institutions themselves, and institutions in
different areas of a state vary widely, and an average would not do. A
non-profit in a city would vary from a non-profit in a rural area, of the
same state, for example. In that case, the CDC Center for Health Statistics
has compiled recently a database of data where the unit of analysis is an
emergency room visit. Their study was conducted using a sample of hospitals
in a sample of states. If your study happens to select one of the hospitals
from this Emergency Room study, much of your data may already be available,
and this could shrink your instrument to only the additional data you would
want to collect. As Annette Schwabe pointed out, this may improve your
return rate. It may also improve the reliability as this data was collected
over a sufficient time span. The Center for Health Statistics has finished
analyzing this dataset and results were reported in its recent book of
tables, as well as in several special reports, all available by mail or
from their web site. The survey instrument they used is also downloadable
from their web site as are several interim reports, and the study is
entitled Emergency Room study, or something like that. Best of all, in its
book of tables, there is an appendix listing all reporting agencies they
collect data from, along with contact info. You can also contact the Center
for Health Statistics directly for guidance, information and perhaps even
some relevant instruments and datasets. I would give you the URL of the CDC
Center for Health Statistics, but the bookmark file is on my other
computer. Just do a search on "CDC and Center for Health Statistics".
Good luck,
Jeanne A.B. Calabro 
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Jeanne A.B. Calabro			Home Phone:  703/450-5460
104 Norwood Place			E-mail:      jcalabro@osf1.gmu.edu
Sterling, Virginia 20164-8503	Affiliation: Brandeis University
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"Sociology changes the world." Personal opinion
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