The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is conducting a full-day, instructor-led, hands-on workshop to provide experience in working with Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) resources. The workshop will provide in-depth exposure to several HCUP databases and related tools. Faculty will be available for consultation on how HCUP data can support participants� research interests. Instructional and reference materials will be distributed and discussed.

Target Audience: This is an intermediate-level workshop designed for health services researchers and analysts who want to learn how to use or improve their use of HCUP databases and products. Individuals interested in State and/or local healthcare analyses or clinical research using administrative healthcare data would benefit from its content. Given the nature and pace of this course, some prior familiarity with healthcare administrative data and a statistical software product such as SAS, SPSS or Stata are recommended.

Course Content: The course will begin with a brief overview of HCUP products, including a demonstration of HCUPnet�a free online querying tool that provides instant access to HCUP statistics. Following the brief introductory material, faculty will present step-by-step instruction on working with HCUP databases to conduct revisit analyses with HCUP data. Attendees will use computers loaded with subsets of the HCUP State Inpatient Databases (SID), State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD), and State Ambulatory Surgery Databases (SASD). Attendees will run SAS programs on the HCUP databases; all SAS programs will be provided. Faculty will cover the basics of loading data files and progress to more advanced topics.

Prerequisites: Prior experience with HCUP databases or prior attendance of the HCUP Webinar series, HCUP overview presentations, or HCUP Online Overview Course is encouraged. Information regarding the HCUP webinar series is available on HCUP-US at http://hcup-us.ahrq.gov/news/events.jsp.

Registration Fee: No charge
Date & Time: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 from 9:00 A.M. � 4:00 P.M. ET
Location: AHRQ Conference Center � 540 Gaither Road, Rockville, MD, 20850

Registration Deadline: April 16, 2012 (or until the maximum number is reached). Registration details are available on HCUP-US at: http://hcup-us.ahrq.gov/news/events.jsp.