TALLAHASSEE – As part of ongoing efforts to promote transparency in health care pricing and service delivery, the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) announced that it will now include an emergency department query tool on FloridaHealthFinder.gov as a measure for researchers to review when conducting hospital analyses.

"Our emergency rooms are getting stretched to the limits, and in order to preserve them for true emergencies, we want to help hospitals and researchers evaluate the demand and see if there are other more appropriate settings for treating patients," AHCA Secretary Holly Benson said. "By providing comprehensive information to consumers and researchers on one Web site, we are empowering them to play active parts in selecting and evaluating health care facilities across Florida."

This new tool, available under the Researchers and Professionals tab, allows users to search for data by principal diagnosis, principal procedure codes, and reason for visit. The data results can be returned by various demographics such as race, sex, age group, principal payer, discharge status, and other criteria such as facility name or county. The results for the data will show total visits, total charges and average charges.

FloridaHealthFinder.gov provides a list of licensed health care facilities, health insurance information and programs to help those without insurance, consumer publications and statistical health reports. The site also provides performance data for selected medical conditions and procedures in Florida’s short-term acute care hospitals and ambulatory (outpatient) surgery centers, information on nursing homes, as well as information to compare health plans on member satisfaction, coverage areas, and quality of care.

The Agency for Health Care Administration champions accessible, affordable, quality health care for all Floridians. AHCA administers Florida’s Medicaid program, licenses and regulates more than 32,000 health care facilities and 37 health maintenance organizations, and publishes health care data and statistics. For more information, please visit http://ahca.myflorida.com.