Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project - Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (HCUP-NEDS)

Supplier
AHRQ
Years Available
2006 to present
Periodicity
Annual
Mode of Collection
Abstraction of administrative/claims data or data from other records.
Description
The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) is the Nation's most comprehensive source of hospital care data, including information on in-patient stays, ambulatory surgery and services visits, and emergency department encounters. HCUP is a family of databases, software tools and related products developed through a federal-state-industry partnership and sponsored by the Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Selected Content
Data are derived from care received at community hospital-based emergency departments. Emergency care received from federal and long-term care hospitals are not included.
Methodology
HCUP databases are derived from administrative data and contain encounter-level, clinical and nonclinical information including all-listed diagnoses and procedures, discharge status, patient demographics, and charges for all patients, regardless of payer. One such database, the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (HCUP-NEDS) captures information on emergency department (ED) visits that do not result in an admission as well as ED visits that result in an admission to the same hospital. HCUP-NEDS enables analyses of ED utilization patterns and supports public health professionals, administrators, policymakers, and clinicians in their decision making regarding this critical source of care. HCUP-NEDS is the largest all-payer ED database publicly available in the United States. The database is comprised of administrative claims data from roughly 30 million ED visits at 950 hospitals that approximate a 20 percent stratified sample of U.S. hospital-based Eds with records at the ED visit level. Weights are provided to calculate national and encounter-level estimates representing 144 million ED visits in 2016. From this sample frame, a stratified sample is derived with strata that include US Census region; urban/rural location; hospital teaching status, ownership, and size; and ED trauma-level. Weights are provided to enable the calculation of national estimates representative of 144 million ED visits in the United States.
Response Rates and Sample Size
An estimated 30 million ED records are sampled annually.
References
Overview of the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample.