The data contained on the Databank reports is used for budgeting, marketing, and internal management purposes within the hospital. At the association level, the data is used for public policy decisions.  Click here to see a listing of available reports.

The Databank program is now used in over half of the states in the country. In the future, this means that hospitals may find increased opportunities to develop peer groups that are even more meaningful to their particular situation.

Monthly Process
Once access to the Web site has been established, hospital personnel enter their aggregated hospital level information for the following areas:

• Discharges by payer and level of service
• Patient days by payer and level of service
• Other statistics including outpatient data in total
• Gross charges by payer
• Contractual adjustments by payer
• Charity care
• Operating expense
• Other operating revenue, operating margin, net nonoperating gains, tax subsidies and total margin
• Gross patient accounts receivable

The deadline each month is 25 days following the previous month's close of business.  If data are not submitted by the 25th, the hospital will receive a reminder phone call to submit the data.

Advantages
Hospitals are encouraged to submit their data online for the following reasons:

• Hospitals have greater control over their data
• The association no longer plays phone tag over simple data entry errors
• Hospitals have instant access to their information and can customize the output to their liking
• Corrections to prior months can be done at any time during the year
• Several users can access the same data within the hospital
• Provides more timely, accurate and complete data to the association for its advocacy and representation role
• Hospitals can download their data into a spreadsheet and analyze it in different ways than presented in the online reports

Fees
The cost for member hospitals to participate in the IHA Databank Program continues to be included as part of each institution's annual membership dues.

Access
Access to www.databank.org is limited to member hospitals. To gain access to the IHA Databank Web site or for more information regarding the Databank Program, please contact David H. Wiesman, vice president, at 317/633-4870 or by email at dwiesman@ihaconnect.org. To access the IHA DATABANK manual click here.