Geolocation of hospitalizations registered on the Brazilian National Health System's Hospital Information System: a solution based on the R Statistical Software.

OBJECTIVE: to describe a solution enabling geolocation of hospital admissions (AIH), processed on the Brazilian National Health System's Hospital Information System. METHODS: in order to spatialize AIHs an R language script was written, based on the microdatasus and CepR packages; the script was applied to identify all AIHs in Goiás state in the year 2015; after downloading and pre-processing the data, the procedure for AIH spatialization was detailed. RESULTS: of the 361,213 AIHs processed, we were able to retrieve 24,220 different ZIP codes (CEPs); from this set of ZIP codes, 23,910 (98.7%) were geolocated; these geolocated ZIP codes enabled spatialization of 97.7% of AIHs processed for the state of Goiás. CONCLUSION: it is possible to spatialize AIHs with a high success rate; the method detailed in this paper opens a new range of possibilities for the design of evaluation studies, formulation of policies and planning of health care actions.

Duke Scholars

Author Joao Ricardo Nickenig Vissoci Emergency Medicine