The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) works with its Federal, State, and local partners to help Washington residents stay healthy and safe. Its programs and services help prevent illness and injury, promote healthy places to live and work, provide education to help residents make smart health decisions, and ensure the State is prepared for emergencies.

The Washington DOH participated in the Adding Clinical Data project to investigate the feasibility and utility of augmenting hospital administrative data with selected clinical data for quality purposes. They engaged hospitals and quality stakeholders through interviews and in-person discussions to explore the benefits, issues, uses, and barriers related to the collecting, sharing, and use of enhanced data.

Overall findings showed that hospitals were generally positive about the value of adding clinical data to administrative datasets, and that there were no major technical issues that would impede feasibility. However, concerns were raised over new reporting requirements and potential organizational barriers. They found that concerns were aligned with certain hospital characteristics. The Washington DOH determined that the proposed hospital data reporting activities must include thorough research to support these activities and consider data collection alternatives that help to outweigh the burden placed on and effort of hospitals.

• Washington State Department of Health - Washington State DOH website.



• Washington Pilot Project Final Report (PDF file, 240 KB; HTML).



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