AZHQ: Revolutionizing Community Health Care Research

AZHQ presents our community with an excellent option for producing more efficient, effective, productive and timely answers to clinical, epidemiological, management and policy questions as they arise. Before AZHQ, such answers could only be provided by starting "from scratch" each time. Answers typically took two or more years, by which time Arizona's rapid growth had already made the results, effort and expenditure less timely, accurate and relevant.

Today, the ability of AZHQ to track systemwide health care utilization and outcomes over time without starting from scratch has become an asset for strengthening our community's capability to inform health care policy, practice, dialogue and collaborative action.

All studies conducted through AZHQ are strictly governed by the following operating principles:

No results will be reported on any individual or in a form that would permit the identification of an individual.
All operations will comply with the relevant state and federal confidentiality statutes and regulations.
Data partner participation in AZHQ is voluntary and currently free of charge.
Ownership of the data resides with the entities that contribute the data - organizations that contribute data to the pool are lending the data to AZHQ without relinquishing ownership.
AZHQ accepts custody of data under the constraint that it will not release any dataset to any entity or organization for any purpose. Any sharing of data must be at the direction of the organization that contributes the data.
The reporting and analysis of data will be directed by the agreements between AZHQ and the data partners.
No results will be reported for any organization unless directed by that organization, except for information that is otherwise public.
AZHQ will provide private reports to individual organizations on internal operations or reports which compare the organization to the aggregate of comparable institutions.