HCUP SEDD - Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, State Emergency Department Databases

General description

1. Database primary purpose - The SEDD captures discharge information from all emergency visits at hospital-owned emergency departments (EDs) that do not result in hospitalization.
2. Overall data type - Health outcomes
3. Dataset type - Longitudinal
4. Data source - Claims
5. Data level - Patient level
6. Geographic location of the data collection sites - California and Florida
7. Sponsor, manager, or home institution - Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ)
8. Date range - California: 2007 - 2011, Florida: 2005 - 2015
9. Geolocation data - Hospital: state postal code; Patients: state postal code, urban/rural code, state/county FIPS code, ZIP code
10. Dates - Admission weekday, month, and year; discharge hour, month and quarter; days to event
11. Hospital identifiers - State-specific hospital identifier and the National Provider Identifier (NPI)
12. Physicians identifiers - Provides de-identified physician identifiers, which can be used to distinguish between physicians. If the original physician identifier is based on a state license number or Universal Physician Identification Number (UPIN), then Physician number can be used to track a physician across hospitals. If the original physician identifier is based on hospital-specific identifiers, then it can only be used to track physicians within a hospital.
13. Longitudinal tracking - Track patients within hospitals (de-identified medical record number), track providers (de-identified physician number, cannot be linked to any other data set)
14. Financial variables - Charge information and cost to charge ratios provided by HCUP as supplemental files (last one starts from year 2012)
15. Clinical areas of interest - Emergency department care level; Injury care surveillance
16. Variables that are uniquely present in this dataset - Combined with State Inpatient Databases (SID) discharges that originate in the ED, the SEDD provides complete enumeration of hospital-owned EDs within market areas or states. The SEDD files include all patients, regardless of payer, providing a unique view of ED care in a state or in a defined market over time.
17. Database caveats and limitations - Not all data elements are available for every state, and not in all years. Coding of data elements may also differ from data files available from the data organizations.
18. Other - Information about patients initially seen in the ED and then admitted to the hospital is included in the SID.

Applicable methods

1. Exploratory analysis (1)
2. Association methods, such as logistic regression (2, 3, 4), generalized linear model (5, 6)
3. Machine learning (7)
4. Time series (8)

High impact designs

• Enrichment of the SEDD dataset through linkage to other datasets, such as Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Healthcare Cost Report Information System (HCRIS) (9), SID (10, 11), Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) (12), Solv ClearPrice (13)

Data dictionary

To access HCUP SEDD data dictionary, click here

Variable categories

1. Patient demographics [e.g., age, sex, race, ethnicity, language, residence indicator (i.e., homeless), marital status]
2. Hospital discharge records (e.g., primary discharge diagnosis, dates of admission and discharge, LOS, patient discharge status etc)
3. Charges (expected payer, total charges)
4. Injury information (i.e., type and intent)
5. Diagnosis codes
6. Procedure codes
7. Disposition at discharge (e.g., discharge to home, transferred to [type of facility], left against medical advice)
8. Died during hospitalization

Linkage to other datasets

• Linkages can be established through hospital identifiers to hospital inpatient databases, such as the HCUP State Inpatient Databases (SID) and to the American Hospital Association Annual Survey File (AHA)

• SEDD can also be linked to social determinants of health data using patient ZIP codes (e.g., Distressed Communities Index Data)