Overview
Many of the tables in the Explore page have tens of thousands of entries. If you have access to multiple states, the number of entries can reach into the hundreds of thousands. Filters allow you to limit the displayed data so you can focus on the "nuggets of gold" you will find in the metrics.
This overview article summarizes the basics of using filters in Marketscape that are applicable to every line of business in every Marketscape Insights module. The details for each line of business in each module are in separate articles. Each of these focused articles will include:
- Specific Recipes - collections of filter settings to achieve a specific set of results
- Filter details - Descriptions of each filter with helpful tips for each
If you want to jump to the details for a specific Marketscape Insights module and line of business, see Menu of Articles.
Lots of options!
Simple Tips
- For each different line of business or provider type, different filters will be available.
- The name of each filter is a helpful guide to what the filter does. The article for each Explore page includes a summary of every filter you will see.
- Above each table is a table search field that works as a filter. Examples:
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- On a physician Explore page, entering the name "Patel" will limit the entries in the table to include only physicians with that name.
- On an organization Explore page, entering "north" will limit the entries in the table to include only organizations that have north in the name. This will include north, northeast, and northern.
- Above each table is a set of toggles that are one-click filters. Clicking the toggle icon to the "on" positions will limit the table to entries that match the selected toggle.
- toggle is on
- toggle is off
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- Example: turning the "Favorites" toggle to the on position will limit the entries in the table to your favorites.
In this article
Using Filters
You will want to use the filters to help you find competitors in a specific area, identify physicians with a larger referral potential, or pinpoint facilities that match specific performance parameters.
It almost goes without saying that there are many, many possible combinations of filters.
Strategy
Like Alice finding her way in Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, you are more likely to find the data you want if you have a clear destination in mind before you start walking through the data.
There are some questions that might help:
- Where? - What is my Market? What is the region I want to include? Where is my agency? Into what area do we need to grow?
- What/Who? - What types of providers am I seeking? In Facilities, this might be Hospitals or SNFs. For Physicians, what specialties do I want to consider? Sometimes this will be a specific hospital, network, or physician group.
- Patient Demographic - What type of patients are you looking for? All Medicare patients is broad, choosing home health patients narrows the field, Last Claimed patients is very specific. How many patients? A physician who has 15,000 Medicare patients probably didn't interact with many.
Put what you want in a simple sentence:
I want to see the top ten physicians in Montgomery county, Pa who are Internal Medicine docs with 200-300 home health patients who have home health utilization less than 30%.
From this statement, we can identify which filters we will use, and how to set them:
- Set the Location filter to Montgomery (county), PA
- Choose Physicians with the specialty, Internal Medicine
- Set two range filters:
- Physician home health patients to 200-300 patients
- Home Health Utilization to physicians below 30%
Now, if you sort the table by the column Home Health Utilization (click the header twice) to show the physicians with the lowest home health utilization, you can browse the list, set the top ten as favorites or export the entire list of physicians.
If, at any time in your filter selection, the table is emptied of all entries, your combination of filters is too limiting. You will need to expand the possibilities. Keep in mind that it is possible that no providers fit your parameters. In that case, you will need to re-think what you are looking for.
Excluding and Including
How do you know what will be in the table as you add filters? Think of using filters as what you want to include, or exclude.
Within a single filter
Imagine that we are looking for physicians in a specific market. We click on the Location filter, click on MN in the State column, and then we start adding counties:
When we click on Becker, the table shows 100 physicians. When we click on Big Stone, we include the physicians from that county, and the table now has 115. If we continue and add Anoka, Our table will include 831 physicians.
In other words, when using a single filter, as we add more items, we will include more entries in the table.
Adding another Filter
Next, we add an additional filter, specialty, and choose one item, Internal Medicine.
The number of physicians in the table is now 92. When we add the specialty filter, we are excluding all physicians from the table who do not meet the specialty we have chosen.
If we add more specialties, we would be including more entries to the table.
After we set filters, the buttons change colors to indicate that the filter is "active." Also, the count of items selected in each filter is shown on the tab. Our two counties are indicated on the Location filter and our one specialty is indicated on the Specialty filter.
Be Careful! - When we first select an entry in a filter column, that entry will be moved to the top. In the image below, notice that MN has been checked, but the counties listed in the County column are from Alaska. AK is currently "selected" even though we clicked on the checkbox for MN. In order to bring up Minnesota counties, you will need to click on the MN, or in that row, in order to give that item focus. Then the County column will update to include counties from MN.
If you click on an Alaska county, e.g. Aleutians East, the table will then include physicians from that county and put a check in the checkbox for AK.
More Details
Pretend that you want to filter the table to two cities that are adjacent but that reside in two different counties.
To add two different cities, you need to use this principle of selecting focus.
First, in the image below, we have selected PA, and Cumberland county. This allows us to click on the city, Wormleysburg.
Second, then we selected Dauphin county, making sure that we have selected it to give the county focus. This will then allow us to select Harrisburg.
When you select the second city, the filter will immediately close. To add another adjacent city, (Like Enola), we would need to open the filter again.
Success!! Notice from the image below that the table now shows physicians from both of the selected cities.
This process is similar if you wanted to filter to two cities that are across a state border
Select the first state 
Select the correct county Select the city
Select the second state 
Select the correct county Select the city
Saving a filter
After you have set up a set of filters the way you want, you can save those filter settings for later use.
Click on Save As.
This will open a dialog box that has one field.
Choose a name that will help identify the filter. Later, when you have 50 filters, you will thank yourself for making it easy to find and choose the one you want.
Once you have saved the filter, you will be able to apply the filter to the current table at any time by clicking on the field Select Saved Filters and choosing the filter of your choice (see image below).
If you currently have a custom filter set in use, the field will contain the name of that filter instead of Select Saved Filter. You can still click that field and select a different saved filter set. 
Please make sure you save your current set before you open a new one.
Filter tools
Once you have saved a filter set, you have some new options.
- Delete - Clicking this button will delete the filter set shown in the field. In this example, MN-Two Counties.
- Save as - If you click this button, you will be able to save the filter under a new name. This is useful if you have made changes to the opened filter set and you want to have both filter sets saved.
- Save - If you have made changes to the opened filter set, you can use this button to save those settings to the opened filter set.
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- clicking this button will open a dialog box that reveals the settings for the opened filter set. -
- clicking this button will reset the current filters to match the settings of the opened filter set. You can think of this as undoing your changes since you opened a filter set. If you haven't made any changes to the filters since you opened the filter set, clicking this button will do nothing. -
- Clicking this button will allow you to share the filter. See next section below.
Sharing a Filter
When you click on the button, a dialog box will open with three options.
Private
Private means that the filter set is not shared to anyone else. You can use this to make a shared filter set no longer shared. Private is the default setting for a new filter set.
My Organization
If you choose My Organization, the opened filter set will be shared with all users in your company.
Custom List
If you choose Custom List, you will be able to select specific colleagues to receive the shared filter set.
You will need to add a name for the shared filter set in the List Name field. You will not be able to save (share) the filter set until you provide a List Name.
You might want to use the same name you used when you first saved the filter set. That way, when you confer with your colleagues, you will be able to match the filter sets. If you are creating filter sets and sharing the filter set for them to use, a different name might be the best choice.
Save the shared set when you are done selecting recipients of your filter set.
When you first save a filter set, you will not be able to share it for techy reasons. The button will not be visible. You have two options:
- Refresh your page (Shift-F5) and open the filter you just saved.
- Clear your filters and open the filter you just saved.
Menu of Articles
- Overview and Strategy
- Marketscape for Home Health
- Marketscape for Hospice
- Marketscape for Skilled Nursing
- Marketscape for HME & Infusion
