How a Data Dictionary Spawned an Enterprise Model

The University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), formed in 1984, is an alliance of academic health centers situated mainly in the United States. As a membership organization, UHC provides its 90 full members and 123 associate members with a variety of helpful resources aimed at improving performance levels in clinical, operational, and financial areas. UHC collects patient and benchmark data from its members as well as purchases complimentary heath care data from third parties. In an effort to strengthen its ability to discover information from these disparate data sources, UHC embarked on an effort to document and relate the data by building a data dictionary. Using the concept of Domains and Subject Areas, UHC was able to conform silo-ed data into a Business Enterprise Model that allows users to discover, locate and relate disparate data across the enterprise allowing for more opportunistic and powerful analysis.

• No budget for tools or outside resources
• Data dictionary data model
• Data population approach
• Home-grown tool demo
• Marketing effort
• Maintenance effort