AHRQ has initiated a research program that awarded eight grants in September 2010 to improve statewide all-payer, hospital-based encounter-level data (inpatient, emergency department, and ambulatory surgery) for the purpose of both producing the evidence base for comparative effectiveness and evaluating efforts to implement comparative effectiveness where the evidence already exists. Two types of grants have been implemented under this research program to improve state data by:

• Enhancing the clinical content of the state databases in Hawaii, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Minnesota
• Improving the race/ethnicity data in state databases in California, New Mexico, and the Northwest region (Idaho, Oregon, and Washington)

The grant projects will be conducted over a 3-year period. During that time, AHRQ (with assistance from contractor Social & Scientific Systems) will disseminate information about the projects as they progress. Upon completion of the projects, AHRQ will disseminate information about lessons learned and tools for other state data organizations to adopt the improvements.

For the clinical enhancement data grants, organizations will link existing core state data to a choice of additional database enhancements, including: electronic laboratory data, hospital-based electronic pharmacy data, electronic pre-hospital emergency care data, and vital record birth and death certificates. The organizations will employ the enhanced data set to conduct comparative effectiveness analyses. Grant abstracts are provided for Florida (PDF file, 18 KB; HTML), Hawaii (PDF file, 16 KB; HTML), Minnesota (PDF file, 10 KB; HTML), New Jersey (PDF file, 16 KB; HTML), and New York (PDF file, 16 KB; HTML).

The grants for improvement of race and ethnicity data will generate better data for comparative effectiveness research to improve health care outcomes, including less disparate outcomes for different racial and ethnic groups. Data organizations may improve their collection of data on race and ethnicity by providing formal training and educational resources. The organizations will provide evidence that the quality of race and ethnicity data has improved as a result of implementation of new initiatives under the grants. Grant abstracts are provided for California (PDF file, 16 KB; HTML), New Mexico ( PDF file, 10 KB; HTML), and the Northwest region (PDF file, 17 KB; HTML) (Idaho, Oregon, and Washington).