Description
The National Patient Care Database (NPCD) is the source data for the VHA Medical SAS Datasets.
NPCD is the VHA's centralized relational database (a data warehouse)
that receives encounter data from VHA clinical information systems.
It is updated daily.
NPCD records include updated patient demographic information,
the date and time of service, the practitioner(s) who provided
the service, the location where the service was provided, diagnoses,
and procedures. NPCD also holds information about patients' assigned
Primary Care Provider and some patient status information such
as exposure to Agent Orange, Ionizing Radiation or Environmental
Contaminants, Military Sexual Trauma, and Global Assessment of
Functioning.
Location
The NPCD is an Oracle database maintained at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC formerly: CFD; formerly: AAC) on a Unix platform.
Access
Researchers are not given access to the NPCD. Rather, data from the NPCD
are available for research and other uses in the form of the Medical SAS Datasets .
Documentation
Documentation of the NPCD is available only on the VA Intranet, where
the data models, history, monthly staff meeting minutes, and other information
can be found.
Documentation produced by VIReC describes the Medical SAS Datasets that are created from the NPCD.
Help
The VIReC Help Desk can assist with questions about using the Medical SAS Datasets.
The HSRData Listserv is a forum for discussion of VA data, most often focusing on the Medical
SAS Datasets.
The Database Point of Contact for the NPCD is John Quinn.
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