Data Systems in Support of Research in Managed Care

The data systems supporting managed care are not structured to facilitate scientific research. We discuss the different types of research typically done within a managed care setting and the strategies successfully used by an affiliated research foundation to develop a data infrastructure to support a multi-investigator research mission. We describe our path from (1) diverse data systems supporting membership, claims, laboratory and pharmacy functions (2) the development of a corporate data warehouse for reporting and (3) the progression to a research data mart designed specifically to support research. We review the technical and resource issues encountered and how the evolution of the data systems for research paralleled and interacted with the research directions of the foundation.

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