How the New Jersey file is built
Every value comes from a New Jersey Department of Health record: its posted decision letters, the State Health Planning Board (SHPB) meeting pages with Department staff recommendations and minutes, and the Department's 2016 to 2020 status reports. Each row links the letter or report it came from.
Sources
The expedited review decisions page links 231 decision letters from 2017 to 2026, and the SHPB decision letters page links the full review letters, 23 of them dated 2016 or later. The letter gives the decision and date, the cost, the submitted and deemed complete dates and the date the approval expires. About 100 letters are scanned images and were read by OCR on their first four pages.
Board pages and staff recommendations
Full review applications get a Department staff recommendation, an SHPB public hearing and vote, and a decision by the Commissioner. 181 SHPB meeting and hearing pages were read for staff recommendations, minutes with the voting record, hearing transcripts and comment letters. The 2017 staff recommendations on the psychiatric bed call give each of the 29 applicants' score and beds awarded.
Status reports
The yearly reports "Certificate of Need Applications Filed in Calendar Year" list each filing by county with the filed date, CN number, facility, representative, description, total cost and status. They exist for 2016 to 2019 and for January to April 15, 2020; the same addresses for 2021 to 2026 return 404. 96 rows come from these reports alone.
Matching
Rows are matched by CN number, normalized across the old and new number formats. County comes from the county code in the CN number, else the status report. Facilities are matched to CMS records by hand on name and address for 100 rows.
Checks on every row
- CN number matched across the letters, the status reports and the Board pages
- Both values kept, with each source named, when a status report and a letter disagree (22 rows carry one)
- Ten rows checked by hand against their documents, across 2016 to 2026, full and expedited review
- Three faults found in that check were fixed in the builder before the file was final
- Pages and PDFs fetched at about one request a second
What the file does not have yet
- No list of filings after April 15, 2020. From then on an application is in the file only when its decision letter is posted, so withdrawn, pending and unposted applications are missing.
- No expedited decisions dated 2016: the expedited page starts with 2017.
- 70 filings from the status reports have no posted decision letter and are listed as no decision found.
- Conditions are not itemized, and scanned letters were read only on their first four pages.
- SHPB minutes are not posted for several meetings that voted; those rows take the Board's recommendation from the decision letter.
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