Optum DOD

#Section 4 Provider information is in two tables, PROVIDER, and PROVIDER\_BRIDGE. The variable, PROV\_UNIQUE uses business intelligence to group the providers ids (BILL\_PROV, REFER\_PROV, SERVICE\_PROV, PROV) into unique physicians or facilities. PROV IDs are traditionally difficult to work with as some providers are assigned multiple ids within our affiliate company’s claim processing system. This makes it difficult to do any analysis based on provider care. While PROV\_UNIQUE cannot completely solve this problem, it takes advantage of known information to consolidate provider IDs into a better identifier of particular providers. The PROVIDER\_BRIDGE table includes all of the relevant ID variables used in different tables. PROV from the medical table and NPI and DEA from the pharmacy tables all link to the new PROVIDER\_BRIDGE table. Then, the PROVIDER\_BRIDGE table can be used to link to the PROVIDER table to get the information such as credentials or specialty information. The PROVIDER\_BRIDGE table also allows the providers in the pharmacy and medical claims to be linked together. **Notes** Optum DOD files include death data (but cannot be linked to socio-economic data nor 5 digit zip code)