What is SPARCS?
New York State maintains a statewide comprehensive data reporting system called the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System or SPARCS as a result of cooperation between the health care industry and government. SPARCS was initially created to collect information on discharges from hospitals, and currently collects patient level detail on patient characteristics, diagnoses and treatments, services, and charges for every hospital discharge, ambulatory surgery patient, and emergency department admission in New York State. Information on patients admitted to hospitals that are not regulated by the Federal government is included in SPARCS (e.g., Veterans Administration and military hospitals are not included in SPARCS). When a patient is discharged from one of the hospitals included in SPARCS, a discharge data abstract is created from the information in the patient’s chart. Each year approximately 2.5 million hospitalizations in New York State are reported to SPARCS. The database
