Read Dr Marty Makary's highly informative book, " Unaccountable: ... How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care. "
Data Transparency is a function of meaningful metrics, ease of use, and easy access. Much of our data is hidden behind a wall of proprietary secrecy, high cost of access, and tedious applications. Lack of timeliness is another critical factor that diminishes the value of data. Purchase of proprietary data contains limitations on making data public.
Colorado Dept of Public Health and Environment contains many data sets within their CoHID application, extracting data or results after entering numerous selection factors. Much of their data needs a downloadable data set, specifically Death Certificates, Birth Certificates, and Communicable diseases. Another potentially valuable data set could be provided at the Colorado Cancer Registry.
Joint Commission requires hospitals to submit their quality scores, yet the data is accessible only by costly fees, with limitations.
CDC has many data sets that are downloadable, but many are not. Reports are pdf with many pages of tables to wade through. Data from Healthy People 2020 could be invaluable if organized for easy access, with downloadable data sets.
CMS contracted with NCQA to process HEDIS data, with access only by subscription at exorbitant cost.
The American Hospital Association (AHA), conducts annual surveys. Access to the data requires a costly subscription fee.
Colorado Hospital Association (AHA) contracts with CDPHE to produce quality measures of hospitals, but they are old and clumsy to navigate. Data sets are not available.
HCPF, Health First Colorado, administers the state Medicaid program. They collect hospital cost reports, but these important public files are not accessible. Data about Medicaid is not provided in a useful manner, including development of public data sets that show the rapid expansion of Medicaid from 10% of Colorado population to more than 20%, after implementation of ObamaCare in 2014.