Issue Brief: Linking Claims & Death Certificate Data to Calculate End-of-Life Measures

February 2025 -- Data from all-payer claims databases (APCDs) can provide researchers with crucial insights into the cost, quality, and utilization of healthcare services across a state or region. Supplementing APCDs with external data sources – including clinical data, census data, and vital statistics – can enable targeted analyses by supplementing the APCD data and providing additional context.

In our latest issue brief, Onpoint Health Data Analyst Alex Ma discusses Onpoint’s recent collaboration with the Vermont Blueprint for Health, where Onpoint linked claims data in Vermont’s APCD to death certificate data provided by the Vermont Department of Health. This linked data enabled the creation of a series of measures that evaluated the utilization of hospice and end-of-life care across the state.

While the APCD provides rich detail regarding the services provided to patients in the final year of their life, death certificate data was needed to identify which APCD members died during the year, as well as the date and location of their death. In this issue brief, we describe our process for linking APCD data to external sources and the results and findings of these end-of-life measures. Read the full issue brief here...