For many years hospitals have had issues which require the need for data, but they lacked financial and statistical information to tell others about those issues or to know how their hospital compared to others.

As time went on, various organizations made attempts to collect data about the hospital industry. Unfortunately, the reporting requirements were oftentimes burdensome and the resulting information was very outdated.

In response to these considerations, the Colorado Health & Hospital Association (CHA) Board of Directors established the DATABANK Program in 1985 to collect financial and utilization data from hospitals throughout the state. In addition to providing information to CHA with which to represent and advocate the interests of its member hospitals, one of the major considerations for the DATABANK Program was, and continues to be, that it provides data, which is informational and useful to the hospitals. The other major principles governing the Program are timeliness, accuracy, completeness, simplicity and uniformity.

Since its inception, the use of DATABANK information before a variety of audiences to influence policy-making has increased dramatically. CHA regularly provides aggregate DATABANK information to our Congressional Delegation elected and appointed state officials, the media, and general public on important issues such as adequate payment, charity care and rural health care. In the Spring of 1990, CHA released its first annual hospital-specific report from the DATABANK Program titled Colorado Hospitals Reference Guide to Financial & Utilization Data, demonstrating that Colorado hospitals are industry leaders in efforts to be publicly accountable. DATABANK has earned the reputation as the credible source of timely financial and utilization data in the State of Colorado.

DATABANK continues to evolve to meet the challenges of a changing health care market. Each hospital's participation in the program is important and encouraged.

Please visit www.databank.org to log into DATABANK.