Conversely, the cafeteria is often viewed as a more economical approach with perhaps less concern about quality of the experience. Internally generated data is usually the by-product of providing a clinical service, such as a hospital admission, clinic appointment, immunization, or birth, death or marriage record. While much of the medical data contained within these records fuel the business of medical claims adjudication, these transactions also provide content that could add tremendous value to the marketing, promotion, routing, strategic planning, customer service and resource distribution functions that run the business. Central to the GIS, of course, are street addresses of the patient, guarantor, physician and employer, which appear on all administrative and clinical records. Most health organizations, however, don't have a quality assurance program to ensure that the very best address gets into the system.
External data adds another dimension to the concerns about data quality.
When health organizations acquire data from outside their organizations, they face the prospect of ingesting cafeteria data at banquet prices. Seldom will you get banquet data at cafeteria prices. Federal and state governments operate some of the largest data cafeterias for health organizations. Much of the government offerings are either not georeferenced or can only be geocoded at a level that makes the data less informative or predictive. Over the years, federal agencies and private philanthropic organizations have sponsored initiatives to essentially enable state health agencies to collect and disseminate better and more useful data for health organizations, particular those that are responsible for promoting competition, lowering costs and improving health status.