Set Up Mandatory Health Facilities Data Reporting

Data are to be submitted on a quarterly basis, no later than 2 calendar months after the end of a calendar quarter, according to the following schedule:

• Jan. 1 - Mar. 31 date of discharge
  • May. 31 due date
  • Jun. 30 corrections due
• Apr. 1 - Jun. 30 date of discharge
  • Aug. 31 due date
  • Sep. 30 corrections due
• Jul. 1 - Sept. 30 date of discharge
  • Nov. 30 due date
  • Dec. 31 corrections due
• Oct. 1 - Dec. 31 date of discharge
  • Feb. 28 due date
  • Mar. 31 corrections due

Facilities that are required to report but fail to do so may be referred to the Alaska Health Facilities Licensing and Certification (HFLC) office to determine whether penalties or fines may be appropriate. Possible enforcement actions range from mandatory attendance at provider education sessions, withholding of Medicaid payments, termination from the Medicaid program, fines, or revocation of your health facility license.

Yes. A copy of the Business Associate Agreement can be found in the Program Guidelines, appendix A-4.

No. Because HIDI is contracted by DOH, the Business Associate Agreement is between DOH as the Covered Entity (CE) and HIDI as the Business Associate (BA). HIDI is acting on DOH’s behalf as the vendor.

After submitting your data to HIDI, you will be notified that you have a validation report available. This report will contain information about any records that were flagged by the automatic validation process. This checks certain fields for invalid or missing data as well as flagging some fields based on logical tests or to request verification of uncommon values.

Missing or invalid required fields: Race is missing; ZIP code is invalid; Total charges amount is missing; Place of Service is missing; SSN is a required field if age 0; SSN is equal to 999999999

Logical tests: Observation hours > 72 hours, please verify; Admit type is newborn but principal diagnosis code is not newborn; Individual line-item charges do not add up to total charges; Discharge date is prior to admit date, check admit date; Age is greater than 0 and other diagnosis appropriate for infants only

Uncommon values: Patient type is outpatient but total charges less than $40 or more than $30,000; Principal payer is "Other"; Length of stay is greater than 365 days, verify discharge and admit dates

Facilities have 30 days following the initial submission due date to review the error validation reports, make corrections if necessary, and provide a corrected dataset to HIDI. At the end of the reporting period, a clean data file is returned to DOH by HIDI. Facilities are encouraged to maintain a less than <5% total error rate to remain in compliance with the program.

Occasionally, other data quality issues are discovered after the data are in use by DOH and other users. Facilities will be notified of suspected issues and given the opportunity to supply a corrected data set if necessary.

Please let us know using the Reporting Deadline Extension Request Form found in Appendix A-2 of the Program Guidelines. Extensions will be given in 30-day increments provided the facility is working toward compliance.

Please let us know using the the Facility Contact Person Designation Form found in Appendix A-1 of the Program Guidelines. Your primary contact person should the facility executive (or administrator) responsible for maintaining HFDR program compliance and approving other facility staff needing access to your online HIDI data submission portal. We highly recommend providing a secondary contact as well. You will be contacted by HFDR program staff regarding any program news or data quality and compliance issues.

To add a new user to your online HIDI data submission portal, please contact hidi@mhanet.com and request a new user authorization form. This form must be signed by the primary or secondary contact on file with the HFDR program if they differ from the person(s) requesting access. To remove a user, please contact HIDI and provide the name of the user who should no longer have access. Current users lists for your facility are available from HIDI upon request.

Yes. A de-identified limited data set can be released for approved purposes under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provided that a Data Use Agreement is in place between the user and DOH. The data may be used for research, public health, or health care operations purposes. Only participating Alaska facilities may request data for health care operations purposes.

The annual inpatient database may contain tens of thousands of discharge-level records, and the outpatient database may contain well over 1 million records. Datasets include dozens of variables, described by the HFDR data dictionary available in Appendix B-2 of the Program Guidelines. Database files are tab-delimited text files and file sizes may exceed 100 megabytes. Due to the size of the database, we recommend using statistical software that is capable of handling large datasets rather than spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel. Data are transmitted via secure electronic message.