Hospital Database Primer: Where Do Hospitals Go for the Information They Need?

Historically, when hospitals needed information or data points for analysis, practitioners or researchers pored through books or searched through logs or documentation in file rooms. Hospital databases make it much easier for healthcare professionals to find the information they’re looking for and to use that data in beneficial ways. 

Here is a sampling of some of hospital databases your MedTech customers and prospects are using for research, education, benchmarking, and inspiring innovative ways to provide care. 

Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)

​The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), working within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, sponsors a set of healthcare databases and tools, HCUP. It’s the largest hospital database with care data, payer, and encounter-level information dating from 1988. It includes data and insights from inpatient and outpatient discharge records, including care provided and outcomes, based on data collection from hospital associations, state and private organizations, and the federal government. 

Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MEDPAR)

MEDPAR is a database maintained by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that contains records on the inpatient services that all Medicare beneficiaries received. This hospital database provides benchmarks for hospital quality and procedures. 

BioMed Central Open Access

​BioMed Central, which publishes peer-reviewed journals, maintains BMC Medicine as well as other databases in the BMC Series. From July 2017 to July 2018, BMC published more than 32,000 open access articles, and users downloaded articles from BMC journals to find the information they needed more than 195 million times. 

CINAHL Plus with Full Text

The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) database offered by EBSCO, is a resource filled with text from nursing and allied health journals and also includes evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons, and continuing education modules. 

DynaMed

​DynaMed, also from EBSCO, gives physicians the ability to quickly search data on evidence-based patient care. The DynaMed database is the result of daily review of medical literature to ensure it’s always up to date. 

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DynaMed

​DynaMed, also from EBSCO, gives physicians the ability to quickly search data on evidence-based patient care. The DynaMed database is the result of daily review of medical literature to ensure it’s always up to date. 

AccessAnesthesiology

McGraw-Hill Medical offers the online resource AccessAnethesiology. This database, optimized for users to read easily on any device, provides data for reference, research, and instruction. It provides access to procedural videos, self-assessment, and textbooks to students, as well as to practicing anesthesiologists seeking recertification.

AccessAnesthesiology is only one database available from McGraw-Hill Medicine, which also includes AccessMedicine, AccessPharmacy, AccessSurgery, AccessPediatrics, and Access EmergencyMedicine.  

JAMAevidence

​Physicians can turn to JAMAevidence for evidence-based medicine data that can help them and their patients make informed choices. It provides data on health issues, available treatments, and outcomes. 

ClinicalKey

Elsevier offers ClinicalKey, a hospital database to help physicians keep up with clinical and patient trends, growing patient volumes, and greater complexity of diseases and medicine. It includes full text from reference books, drug information, videos, and patient education handouts. 

Cochrane Library

​The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases with information that can help inform clinical decision making. The library includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCA). 

DSM-V Library

The American Psychiatric Association offers digital access to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, a resource for mental health clinicians and researchers. It provides criteria to diagnose and classify mental disorders in hospital and other clinical settings. 

Essential Evidence Plus

The Essential Evidence Plus database provides answers to clinical medicine questions, and Daily POEMs (Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters), and a PDA version includes the Five Minute Clinical Consult. 

MEDLINEPlus

Although it’s a consumer database rather than a hospital database, MEDLINEPlus, from the National Library of Medicine, provides information on more than 500 diseases and conditions. MEDLINEPlus also includes information on drugs and supplements, tutorials and videos, an explanation of medical tests, and a medical encyclopedia. 
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Hospitals can also reference PubMed, that includes more than 30 million citations from MEDLINE journals and books. 

TOXNET, TOXLINE & DART

The U.S. National Library of Medicine announced that TOXNET information is now accessible in a variety of different online locations. TOXLINE, which provides data on biochemical, pharmacological, physiological, and toxicological effects of chemicals, and DART, developmental toxicology data, are now available on PubMed. 

Learn More About Hospital Data

​Although these databases and others are used by hospitals and their professional staff, many databases are also available to your Medtech team. Carevoyance’s territory manager and other tools can help you with research, prospecting, targeting, and strategy. Click the link below to find out more!

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About the Author

Carevoyance contributor Bernadette Wilson of B Wilson Marketing Communications is an experienced journalist, writer, editor, and B2B marketer, specializing in content for technology companies.