Source Files

The Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA) provides emergency department (ED) records for North Dakota to HCUP in a combined outpatient file that includes ambulatory surgery (AS), ED, imaging, and observation services (OS) records.

MHA includes a type of record flag on its outpatient file that identifies each outpatient record type. The definition used for ED records has changed over time.

Starting in 2012: Minnesota selects ED records from their broader outpatient file using the following criteria:

• Bill Type must be 13x, 83x or 85x
• Bill Type must be xx1, xx4, xx5 or xx7
• and Must have either a revenue code of 0450 through 0459 or a CPT code of 99281 through 99288
• and Principal Diagnosis Code AHRQ CCS Chapter >= 1 and >= 17
• From 2012-2013 only, records for patients with revenue code 0456 indicating urgent care are not included in the SEDD. The SEDD typically include these records.

Prior to 2012: Minnesota selects ED records from their outpatient files using the following criteria:

• Revenue Code in the range "0450" to "0459" or
• CPT procedure code in the range "99281" to "99288" or
• Any ICD-9-CM diagnosis code in the range "800" to "995" or

Any external cause of injury codes Flag assignment is not hierarchical, which means that an ED record can have evidence of other outpatient services, such as OS.

Selection of Records for Inclusion in the SEDD

MHA provides HCUP with one outpatient file in which ED records are included with records for other nonemergent outpatient services. All records identified by MHA as ED are included in the SEDD (HCUP data element STATE_ED=1 based on the ED-specific flag).

Additionally, any other records with evidence of ED services that are flagged by the variable HCUP_ED (i.e., HCUP_ED>0) during HCUP processing are included in the SEDD. If a record in the SASD also has evidence of ED services based on the HCUP criteria (HCUP data element HCUP_ED not equal to 0), then the SASD record is also included in the SEDD. These records will have the same value for the HCUP data element KEY.

Types of Facilities Included in the Files Provided to HCUP by the Partner

MHA provides HCUP with emergency department (ED) data from all licensed hospital-owned EDs in North Dakota.

A comparison of the number of hospitals included in the SEDD and the number of hospitals reported in the AHA Annual Survey is available starting in data year 2011.

Hospital-owned EDs do not always report data for a full calendar year. Some open or close during the year; others have technical problems that prevent them from reporting data for all months in a year.

Exclusion of Records During HCUP Data Processing

Beginning with 2016 data, records with a discharge disposition of "still a patient" are retained in the HCUP SEDD. Prior to 2016 data, these records were excluded.