NAHDO Data Pioneers

2024 Recipient - Amy Costello

Amy Costello is the Director of Health Analytics at the Institute for Health Policy and Practice (IHPP) at University of New Hampshire. Since her first professional role after college over 20 years ago as a “Data Analyst”, Amy has spent her career making data useful and impactful. In her first role at IHPP, she worked directly with practitioners in the community to get access to the data that they need, and to help them understand how to use it effectively. Amy has spent many years since then “liberating” data, overseeing the development of web-based analytic tools, making data as accessible as possible to a wide variety of users. Amy has been involved in the APCD community since 2007, during the “Regional All-Payer Healthcare Information Council” era. While Amy has been responsive to many needs to APCD community members, she has focused a great deal of her time and energy to data harmonization and standardization.

She has worked closely with state and federal agencies across the country to advocate for best practices for APCDs. Amy took the lead in working directly with Data Maintenance Standards Organizations, including the pain-staking process of checking lops and segments in the development of the Post Adjudicated Claims Data Reporting (PACDR) with X12. She established trust with NUBC, NUCC, and others, as examples of the many relationships she fostered on behalf of the greater APCD community. Everyone involved in the development of the APCD-CDL will remember Amy’s detailed walk-through of data elements, references, and code sets. Where other people would find tedium, Amy has excelled; the product of that dedication was been a number of resources that have improved APCD development for states.