RCMI Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus

RCMI Program Hosts ResDAC Courses at the Medical Sciences Campus

The RCMI Research Informatics Unit hosted two workshops by staff of the Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC). ResDAC is a consortium of faculty and research staff from the University of Minnesota, Boston University, and Dartmouth College. The goal of ResDAC is to assist the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) in increasing the number of new researchers skilled in accessing and using HCFA data for studies which will improve the Medicare and Medicaid programs and add value to current HCFA activities.

Back from left: Marshall McBean, Beth A. Virnig and Mike Hadad.
Front from left: Kelly Merriman and Sara Kind.

The first workshop, HCFA 101, was held from February 17 through 19, and provided an introduction to the use of Medicare data for research. This workshop was taught by Dr. Marshall McBean, ResDAC's Project Director; Dr. Beth A. Virnig, Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health; Mike Hadad, Consultant, and Kelly Merriman and Sara Kind, Technical Support Specialists. Participants included staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, among others.

From left: Phyllis Beaudette, Tom Bubolz and Neil Jordan.

The next workshop was held from February 22 to February 26. The objective of HCFA 201 was to provide experienced data analysts with an intermediate level of skills in Medicare claims data analysis. The audience of this activity included faculty and personnel from Morehouse School of Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Universidad Central del Caribe, and the Medical Sciences Campus. Dr. Tom Bubolz, ResDAC's Deputy Director for Outreach and Training, and Neil Jordan, Technical Support Specialist, were the faculty in charge of this workshop. They were assisted by Phyllis Beaudette, Outreach and Training Coordinator for ResDAC.

These activities were held at the computer workshop facilities of Compucentro in the Medical Sciences Campus. There, the faculty was able to provide participants with hands-on experience in the management and analysis of Medicare claims data. Using training data files specifically developed for these workshops, participants learned about the strengths and limitations of Medicare files as research resources, and faculty shared solutions to analytical challenges posed by the complexity of these databases.

From left: Marshall McBean, José G.Conde and Chancellor Pedro Juan Santiago Borrero.

The RCMI Program is grateful to ResDAC for their commitment to the development of research infrastructure at the Medical Sciences Campus, and apreciates the trust of Dr. McBean and Dr. Bubolz in our capabilities to collaborate in this endeavor. We hope this will be the first of many future joint activities.

José G. Conde,
Associate Program Director
March 1, 1999

Emma Fernández-Repollet,Ph.D.

Program Director

RCMI Program

Room 621-A, 6th. floor

Main Building, Medical Sciences Campus

GPO Box 365067

San Juan, PR 00936-5067

Email: efernandez@rcm.upr.edu

Voice (787) 763-9401

FAX (787) 758-5206