HPM 211 Advanced Health Policy Analysis

Health care policymakers and administrators frequently need to analyze observational data that has not primarily been collected for research purposes. Nonetheless this data has important policy, outcomes, and quality improvement implications.  With the rapid increase in U.S. health information technology capacity, particularly the incentives built into the Affordable Care Act, there are growing opportunities to improve quality and design policy using these "secondary data." This course aims to teach students the skills necessary to conduct quality health services and health policy research using secondary data. This includes formulating research aims and applying appropriate study designs for achieving these aims. The course will also include a survey of the content and structure of several commonly used administrative and public databases available to researchers and workshops to develop the skills to access and manipulate these valuable resources.