1. Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS)
Institute for Implementation Science in population health at cuNY
CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy
June 2016
Disclaimer: The information in this slide set was assembled by the The Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health at CUNY to inform the work of the NYC DSRIP HIV projects. The content of these slides is based on publicly available information as of June
For detailed SPARCS inquiries, see the resources and contact information slides.

2. OUTLINE Background Content How to use the data
Limitations and Strengths
Resources

3. BACKGROUND (1)
What is the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS)?
Cooperation between the health care industry and government
Established in 1979 to create a statewide data set to contribute to the goal of providing high quality medical care at a reasonable cost to the inhabitants of NY by serving as an information source for organizations and agencies seeking to promote the efficient delivery of health care services
Population and geography
All payer hospital discharges and visits in New York State, per calendar year
SPARCS inpatient and outpatient data is provided by facilities certified under Article 28 of the Public Health Law.
Any facility certified to provide inpatient services, ambulatory surgery services, emergency department services or outpatient services is required to submit data to SPARCS. This includes all New York State Hospitals and Diagnostic and Treatment Centers (i.e. clinics)
There were 2.4 million inpatient hospitalizations in 2013

4. BACKGROUND (2) Accessibility of data
Three levels of SPARCS data access
Public/De-Identified
Public use file containing basic record-level detail. All protected health information (PHI) has been removed. Annual data from 2009.
Limited
Requires submission of application. Contains some indirect patient identifiers, such as month and year of date fields, and some geographic identifiers of the patient.
Identifiable
Requires submission of application. Contains data elements that if disclosed without any restrictions on use or re-disclosure, would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

5. BACKGROUND (3) Timeframe of available data
Public, de-identified data is currently available annually from
For limited and identifiable data files, data requests must be submitted with an application.
Initially, data was collected for inpatient discharges only.
1980 began collecting for every inpatient hospital discharge
1983 began collecting ambulatory surgery visits
2003 began collecting emergency department admissions
2011 began collecting outpatient visits

6. CONTENT What’s in the SPARCS data set
Claim-level detail on:
patient characteristics, diagnoses, treatments, services, and charges for hospital discharges, ambulatory surgery, emergency department, and hospital-based outpatient service visits in New York State
HIV-related indicators can be found within:
Major Diagnostic Categories
Clinical Classification Software Diagnosis Codes
APR-DRG Classification Codes
AIDS/HIV flag

7. How to use SPARCS data

8. HOW TO USE THE DATA (1)
List of approved projects using Limited/Identifiable SPARCS data:
To investigate the association between outcomes with case volume at the hospital level
To determine regional variations in orthopedic hospital costs by location
To critically assess longitudinal outcomes and cost utilization
To examine long term mortality outcomes for NYS residents who underwent ICU care

9. HOW TO USE THE DATA (2) Use of Public, de-identifiable data
NYU School of Medicine developed a data source using the public, de-identified SPARCS data.
Easier format that downloading raw data
Step-by-step instructional guide for developing a research question using this data
Data from 2013 and 2014 are included – 4.5 million patient-level records

10. HOW TO USE THE DATA (3)
NYU School of Medicine student project example:

11. HOW TO USE THE DATA (4)
Potential use of SPARCS to further DSRIP PPS work
Using the public, de-identifiable data sets, you can filter by year for inpatients that were assigned a primary major diagnosis of HIV. You can look at this subset by year, by hospital/facility, by type of admission, length of stay, cost, etc.
By requesting data from the limited or identifiable datasets, you can gain data on all hospitalizations that had a positive HIV test, regardless of the reason for admission.
This information may be useful to compare HIV burden in your facility or region to others in NYS with respect to hospitalizations.

12. LIMITATIONS What to keep in mind:
The public data sets have limited information on HIV. More detailed data requires a data request application.
The release of public data takes time to put together, and therefore has an inherent delay. Currently 2013 data is available through the Health NY website.
Requests for limited and identifiable data takes time.

13. STRENGTHS
Longitudinal data on all NYS hospitalizations is readily available.
A list of approved projects from the limited/identifiable data sets is available – allowing for possible collaborations across sites and directed questioning.
Data is not limited to HIV. SPARCS data may be used in a number of projects within your facility.

14. RESOURCES Publications and reports
Lazar R, Kersanske L, Braunstein S. Matching inpatient hospitalization records to the NYC HIV Surveillance Registry,
Missios S, Bekelis K. Regional disparities in hospitalization charges for patients undergoing craniotomy for tumor resection in New York State: correlation with outcomes. J Neurooncol. 2016 Jun;128(2): doi: /s Epub 2016 Apr 12.
Arakaki L, Ngai S, Weiss D. Completeness of Neisseria meningitidis reporting in New York City, Epidemiol Infect. 2016 Mar 17:1-8
Hodgins JL, Vitale M, Arons RR, Ahmad CS. Epidemiology of Medial Ulnar Collaterial Ligament Reconstruction: A 10-year study in NYS. Am J Sports Med. 2016 Mar;44(3): doi: /
Guides/guidelines and general information
NYU Medical School data tool:

15. CONTACT INFORMATION
SPARCS Operations Bureau of Health Informatics Office of Quality and Patient Safety New York State Department of Health Empire State Plaza Corning Tower Room 1970 Albany, NY Phone: (518) Fax : (518) (general inquiries) (data requests) Data request application

16. CUNY Institute for Implementation Science IN population health
Thank you!
CUNY Institute for Implementation Science IN population health
cunyisph.org