Imputation of Race and Ethnicity in Health Insurance Claims
Ofer Harel, PhD University of Connecticut
The State of Connecticut is currently populating an All Payers
Claims Database (APCD) which will hold all healthcare claims data
for residents of Connecticut. The APCD will be a valuable resource
for the study of healthcare delivery, costs and outcomes. It is also a
potential resource for the study of health disparities in Connecticut.
However, since very few healthcare claims records include the race
and ethnicity of the beneficiary (approximately 3%), their use for the
study of health disparities is very limited. The imputation of race and
ethnicity in these claims data would greatly increase the value of the
data held in the APCD and may lead to better healthcare outcomes for
CT residents. Currently no model exists to impute race and ethnicity
in CT healthcare claims. This project aims to use previously existing
CT birth records data held by the Department of Public Health (DPH)
to produce an imputation model that can be used to impute race
and ethnicity in CT healthcare claims, thereby greatly increasing the
utility of the data in the CT APCD. In addition, the model created for
this project can be then extended for use in other states, increasing the
general utility of healthcare claims. (This is joint work with Robert Aseltine and Yishu Xue).