Publications

Predicting Severe Diabetes Complications Using Administrative Claims Data in Maryland

Leigh Goetschius, PhD, Danielle Barefoot, MEd, Fei Han, PhD, Ruichen Sun, MS, and Morgan Henderson, PhD, co-authored this article published in The American Journal of Managed Care.

The authors discuss the results of Hilltop’s large-scale risk predictive model based on administrative claims and conclude that the model can predict severe type 2 diabetes events for the Medicare FFS population in Maryland.

Read the article online.

Risk Score Specifications and Codebook for The Hilltop Institute's Pre- Models, Version 4

In 2014, the state of Maryland partnered with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to modernize its unique all-payer rate-setting system for hospital services to improve the overall health of Maryland residents by increasing health care quality and reducing the cost of care. In service of providing better care at lower costs, The Hilltop Institute at UMBC, in partnership with the Maryland Department of Health, has developed predictive risk stratification models to identify patients at high risk for potentially preventable health care utilization that can be used to help target care resources to the patients who need them most.

This document strives to explain the intended use, technical implementation, and model performance of the Hilltop Pre- Models as of January 2026. The Pre- Models are a suite of prediction tools spanning the Pre-AH Model, Pre-DC Model, and Pre-HE Model. This document will be updated as the models are updated or when new models become operational, and significant changes will be noted in the documentation edit history table and in the text when necessary.

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The Hilltop Pre-HE Model: Hospice Eligibility & Advanced Care Planning Fact Sheet

The Hilltop Pre-HE Model—which generates the rankings for the Hospice Eligibility and Advanced Care Planning (Pre-HE) scores—is designed to support proactive advanced care planning discussions by estimating a patient’s risk of eligibility for hospice. The Pre-HE Model provides risk scores and reasons for risk for all attributed beneficiaries of Maryland Primary Care Program (MDPCP) practices every month in order to identify patients that are potentially appropriate for hospice care and to provide care teams with information that can guide the sensitive and difficult conversations about end-of-life care with patients and their families.

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