The federal and private sector roles in the development of minimum data sets and core health data elements

This article presents a picture of federal and private efforts in defining minimum data sets and core data elements for health care. For more than 25 years the Federal Government has been engaged in extensive development of minimum data sets and core health data elements. As a major collector and processor of health data, the government identifies, defines, and implements standardized data in the health care field for describing data such as mortality, morbidity, and infectious diseases of the population. This article reports on 17 minimum data sets and core health data elements that are published or in draft form in health care to date. They include regulated data elements that are needed for reimbursement from the Health Care Financing Administration and core health data elements from the Health Resources and Services Administration. They also include recommended data elements for better reporting to the government, and private sector initiatives that are under development, being researched, or in use to standardize data collection for assessing access, quality, and costs of health care. This significant framework can be used in furthering research on the development of the computer-based patient record, the acceleration of data standards, and the evaluation of vocabulary in health care.