V.T.C.A. Health and Safety Code § 108.011

Dissemination of Public Use Data and Council Publications

The Texas Health Care Information Council must promptly provide public use data and data collected to those requesting it.  Public use data does not include provider quality data or confidential data.  The Council must issue reports to government officials at least annually.  The Council must use the data collected to prepare reports and provide information on providers.  The reports must identify providers, including individual physicians, and compare data elements.  Individual physician identification must not be by name, but by uniform physician identifiers.  The Council must also issue reports to provide information for review by the Health and Human Services Commission for services provided in a niche hospital.  The Council must adopt procedures to ensure the accuracy of the data before it is released to the public.  If data is requested about a specific provider, the Council must notify the provider about the release of the data.  Any reports issued by the Council must have a review and comment period for affected providers before being released to the public.  Any provider comments must be made available to the public and be web accessible.  Public use data and provider quality data  released to the public must also contain consumer education information.  The Council must release public use data in the aggregate without provider identifiers when it involved rural health providers or the cell size of the data is below the minimum size established by the Council that would allow identification of individual providers.