Stuck On Social Work

Last week I had the privilege to speak with Dr. Joshua Rosenthal about his company RowdMap and how they use open data to assist health care organizations define value and risk. He concluded our conversation by advising me to play around with open data sets.

What is open data exactly? According to OpenDefinition.org, “A piece of data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.” These data sets are free and you just need reference the source in your work. For an even deeper dive I came across this article on twitter today as well…

#BigData vs. #OpenData and their relationship https://t.co/VZp9uVxZ3J

— Zoe Ennis (@ennis_z) June 13, 2016

A great place to dive in is federal and state data. Per Joshua’s advice I started to play around with HealthData.gov. I also did some research and found my own state Data repository. How these data sets are presented are often complex to navigate. They will most likely require a multi-disciplinary approach to examining, interpreting, and using the data.

In typical social work fashion, it was not what the data says that I found important but the journey to get there. It was interesting to see what federal, state, and other organizations considered important data to open up. If these are the data sets that are important to these funding sources, organizations should pay attention. Mental health and other non-profits should take notice of these metrics. This could give an organization of what things to measure, integrate into programming, use for grant proposals, and perhaps compare your already collected data to existing open data.

Despite my best efforts to explore these spaces, there was a lot I did not quite understand. I spent a couple hours playing around. The New York State data center was interesting because it could present things visually. Here is a visualization of Potentially Preventable Inpatient Re-admissions by county.

It was interesting to not only see the data but also understand what their definition of a Potentially Preventable Inpatient Re-admissions was. The process of looking through the data finding what is important to your organization might is a good excercise.

My one caution is that exploring this data is probably done best as a team sport. You might need someone from your IT department to help with the code, effectively display, and interpret the data. Collaboration with local universities and researchers to explore open data would be powerful. Within social work, field supervisors may want to talk with their host universities and vice versa. Of course if you are tech savvy and have a strong research background, you may never leave these data sets.

The below graphic from GapingVoid has been making the rounds on social media and is concludes how I feel social work and those in the trenches should be involved in using open data..

Am proud to own the original version of this @gapingvoid artwork. This is the revised one. Rings true for Comms pros pic.twitter.com/UjgHSncGFf

— Rachel Miller, All Things IC (@AllthingsIC) June 10, 2016

Those of us “doing the work” have the power to turn all this open data information into knowledge. With right team exploring this data has great potential to impact mental health and non-profits. So check out…

HealthData.Gov

Data.Gov

Or you can search your state and Open Data and see what’s out there. If you have a good open data story to share please comment below or send me an email at stuckonsw@gmail.com. I am fascinated by this topic and would love to learn more..

As always I do my best work running into resources on twitter. This time I was following the Health Datapolooza Conference (#hdpalooza- Yes is it a real thing) Last week I discussed a resource for data to help understand consumer feedback. This was based on the concept that data can be aggregated and also give us feedback in real time. In doing so, analyzing data perhaps better help inform us how to make services better.

This week’s resource is similar; RowdMap is a company that helps your healthcare organization understand data that is available in variety of sources. Taking a deep dive into this data to better help define value and fiscal risk. They specialize in helping organizations be prepared from the transition from fee-for-service to value based care.

They on a variety of sources including but not limited to already open data, academic reports, and a partnership with U.S News and World Report. Using data in your area try to look at relevant data that are both under and over utilized.

From the Care Management perspective, I was intrigued by their presentation at Health Datapalooza…

I had some questions about how this relates to mental health and behavioral health integration so I reached out to co-founder and Chief Science Officer; Dr. Josh Rosenthal. I had the pleasure to chat with him briefly on the phone to understand the potential of RowdMap for these areas.They have started doing some work with medicaid around the value of mental health. He has been working with some primary care settings and looking at some medicaid data around mental health mental health. There is tremendous potential in this area but it is early on. He reported that mental health is a bit more of challenge as it is difficult to measure. Area’s like cardiology and orthopedics are easier to measure in terms of the services provided.

The biggest advice he offered me is for Mental Health providers and other non-profits is to dive into some of the open data sources that are out there. The goal will be to understand what metrics are being captured and how they might matter to you. He advised me to check out HealthData.gov. I also did some research and found data.gov and in New York State found Health Data NY. In a brief exploration of these resources, it it has a lot potential. You will probably need someone who is data/tech savvy to take a look at this but you can mine meaningful numbers.

I am going to take a little more time myself but I would love to hear from organizations who are using these open data sources from the government. In the meantime, if your organization is preparing for value-based care; be sure to connect with RowdMap.