Department of Finance & Administration
Dave Goetz, Commissioner

The Division of Health Planning is developing a centralized Health Data Warehouse to bring together information about health in Tennessee. The Data Warehouse is a decision support system that employs business intelligence software to inform policymakers and legislators so that they can make decisions based on accurate, consistent data to improve the health of Tennesseans.

The state has a wealth of information about the health and health care of Tennessee. This information is housed throughout the state's departments and agencies. In the past, it has been difficult and time-consuming to pull this information together to produce good analyses. The Data Warehouse serves as a central location for bringing the state's health care information together. The Data Warehouse only generates information at the aggregate population level (by county or region for example), never at the individual level. An individual's personal health information cannot be accessed through the Data Warehouse.

Some reports from the Data Warehouse serve analysis functions for specialized audiences such as participants in the Certificate of Need process or within the departments of state government. Future reports will be of interest to general public.

What the Data Warehouse does:

It brings together aggregate population information from many sources in the state and makes reports and analyses available to policymakers to inform their decisions.

What the Data Warehouse does NOT do:

The Data Warehouse does not report on any information about an individual's health. We respect patient privacy and abide by all privacy regulations regarding personal health information, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1986, as amended (HIPAA). Individual information is not useful for policy-making decisions and thus is not included in the Data Warehouse.

All Payer Claims

The Division's Data Warehouse work includes implementing a legislative mandate to create an all payer claims database. The Committee is guided by the Tennessee Health Information Committee in carrying out this project. The current members of the Tennessee Health Information Committee are:

Dave Goetz, Chair – Commissioner of Finance and Administration

Virginia Trotter Betts (or designee) – Commissioner of Mental Health and Developmental Disability

Susan Cooper – Commissioner of Health

Nick Coussoule – Sr. Vice President and Chief Information & Strategic Technology Officer, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee

Micah Cost – Director of Professional Affairs, Tennessee Pharmacists Association

Darin Gordon – Deputy Commissioner of the Bureau of TennCare

Melissa Hargiss – Director, Office of e-Health Initiatives

Barbara Houchin – Executive Director of Strategic Planning, Saint Thomas Health Services

Ranyan Lu – Director of Research, Clinical Analytics, UnitedHealthcare

Joseph E. “Pete” Kelley – Physician, Assistant Professor of Surgery, University of Tennessee College of Medicine

Michael Minch – Physician

Leslie Newman – Commissioner of Commerce and Insurance

Jeff Ockerman – Director, Division of Health Planning

Harold Runsvold – Health Care Consumers Representative

William G. Southwick – President and CEO, HealthMark Partners, Inc.

Mary E. Taylor – Head of Regulatory Compliance, Aetna

Cristie Upshaw Travis – CEO, Memphis Business Group on Health

Mary Layne Van Cleave – Executive Vice President/COO, Tennessee Hospital Association

The Data Warehouse does not currently make statistics available to the public. For health statistics, see the Health Planning Links page.