New Data Files Provide Comprehensive View of U.S. Healthcare

Three new data files from AHRQ’s Compendium of U.S. Health Systems are now available to provide researchers, policymakers, and others with a comprehensive, first-time view of the U.S. healthcare landscape:

• The outpatient site linkage file provides data on more than 283,000 outpatient sites in 2022, including information on practice type, specialty, and Site specialty data that can be used to identify and study primary care practices.  There are also indicators for whether sites are located in a Medically Underserved Area (MUA) or a Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA).
• The nursing home linkage file includes 2020-2022 data on nearly 15,000 nursing homes, including information on location, system affiliation, and ownership.
• The home health care linkage file provides 2020-2022 data on health care, home dialysis, and home hospice providers.  It includes information on location and ownership for nearly 13,000 home health care organizations.

The compendium is a product of AHRQ's Comparative Health System Performance Initiative.  As a complement to the outpatient site linkage file, AHRQ has released a data visualization that allows users to filter data by state to indicate the proportions of practices that are corporate owned, owned by integrated delivery networks, or independent.