An Introduction to Health Care Administrative Data.

Health care administrative data are generated at every encounter with the health care system, whether through a visit to a physician’s office, a diagnostic procedure, an admission to hospital, or receipt of a prescription at a community pharmacy. The terms “health care utilization data”, “administrative health care billing records”, “administrative claims data”, or simply “claims data” are synonymous with “health care administrative data”. These data are collected for administrative or billing purposes, yet may be leveraged to study health care delivery, benefits, harms, and costs. Pharmacists play a key role in the health care system and may be uniquely attuned to identify important pharmacy practice and pharmacotherapy questions that can be answered with health care administrative data. However, before embarking on a new research study, a funda mental understanding of the strengths and limitations of these data for research is imperative. In this primer, we introduce the common types of health care administrative data and how they may be used to understand professional community pharmacy services, drug utilization, and drug safety and effectiveness.