Virginia Health Information (VHI) works with private organizations and public bodies to use health data to meet the varied needs of the citizens of the Commonwealth. Whether it is private programs to recognize and reward hospitals improving patient safety or helping senior citizens find needed care, VHI is working with groups to cost-effectively use health data to improve care and save lives.

VHI participated in the Adding Clinical Data project to add Present on Admission (POA) and clinical data to Virginia’s established administrative system. They recruited 27 Virginia hospitals into the pilot, which resulted in the collection of nearly 400,000 POA-enhanced patient records with accompanying laboratory values, representing almost half of all Virginia discharges. During the course of the project, POA reporting was mandated in Virginia. VHI provided data quality feedback reports to hospitals including distribution of POA values, potential hospital-acquired conditions, and pre- and post-use of the POA indicator showing the impact on AHRQ Quality Indicator (QI) rates. Toward the end of the project, VHI began engaging the health insurance, physician, and consumer communities on the use of this information for quality initiatives.

• Virginia Health Information – VHI website containing Pilot Project materials.



• Virginia Pilot Project Final Report (PDF file, 2.1 MB; HTML)



• Subsequent Projects Leveraging AHRQ-Virginia Pilot Project
• Technical Brief – Enhancing Hospital Performance Measurement Through Greater Data Integration: Linking Clinical Data to All-Payer Administrative Data (High-Value Health Care Project, 2010)



• Other AHRQ-sponsored Pilot and Planning Projects: State specific project information for Florida, Minnesota and Washington.