Thomas Helfer, Ph.D.
Universal newborn hearing screening (NBHS) and early intervention in cases of hearing loss discovery have been presented in guidelines for early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI) set by the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing (JCIH). The federal government has set goals for EHDI within the Healthy People 2010 program of the Department of Health and Human Services. However, to the authors' knowledge, there has not yet been proposed a uniform data set for collecting outcomes metrics information nationally on the number of hospitals providing EHDI services.
Helfer, Shields, and Gates (2000) posited that a uniform coding structure for occupational hearing loss services would allow outcomes analyses to be performed across a range of hearing conservation programs. They further argued that a EHDI data modeling exercise should be performed to support outcomes analysis for NBHS services and rates of discovery of hearing loss in newborns for public health reporting purposes.
The current paper presents a data model for EHDI based on the methods presented in Helfer, Shields, and Gates (2000). Outcomes metrics from EHDI performed within the Military Health System could be furnished from the hospitals and audiology practices providing EHDI services to the Standard Inpatient Data Record (SIDR) repository and the Standard Ambulatory Data Record (SADR) repository. The authors present a "strawman" of such a data model.
Analysis of these data could be performed as a decision aid in case management activities and to allow providers to perform statistical quality control of their practices. The information derived from these data could also serve as a decision aid to public health officials and healthcare policy makers to support services to infants who are congenitally hard of hearing and their families in the civilian sector.