In this module, you will define clinical identification algorithms, identify how data are transformed by algorithm rules, and articulate why some data types are more or less reliable than others when constructing the algorithms. You will also review some quality measures that have NQF endorsement and that are commonly used among health care organizations. You will discuss how groupers can help you analyze a large sample of claims or clinical data. You'll access open source groupers online, and prepare an analytical plan to map codes to more general and usable diagnosis and procedure categories. You will also prepare an analytical plan to map codes to more general and usable analytical categories as well as prepare a value statement for various commercial groupers to inform analytic teams what benefits they can gain from these commercial tools in comparison to the licensing and implementation costs.

In this module, you will describe logical processes used by database and statistical programmers to extract, transform, and load (ETL) data into data structures required for solving medical problems. You will also harmonize data from multiple sources and prepare integrated data files for analysis.

In this module, you will describe to an analytical team how risk stratification can categorize patients who might have specific needs or problems. You'll list and explain the meaning of the steps when performing risk stratification. You will apply some analytical concepts such as groupers to large samples of Medicare data, also use the data dictionaries and codebooks to demonstrate why understanding the source and purpose of data is so critical. You will articulate what is meant by the general phase -- “Context matters when analyzing and interpreting healthcare data.” You will also communicate specific questions and ideas that will help you and others on your analytical team understand the meaning of your data.