Source Files

The New York State Department of Health's Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) provides emergency department (ED) data to HCUP in a single outpatient file that also includes ambulatory surgery (AS) and other outpatient services. Outpatient records in SPARCS are edited as using ED services if the 045X outpatient ancillary codes are reported.

Records for patients treated in the ED, and then treated and released from observation care are also included in the ED data.

New York sets certain data elements to missing (blank) in the source file when the record contains an indication of an induced abortion or AIDS/HIV.

Selection of Records for Inclusion in the SEDD

SPARCS provides HCUP with one outpatient file in which ED records are included with records for other nonemergent outpatient services. All records identified by SPARCS as ED are included in the SEDD (HCUP data element STATE_ED=1 based on revenue codes in the 045X range).

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

New York collects ED data from all licensed hospital-owned EDs in the State.

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 2010.

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. Beginning in 2010, records with a designation of "admitted as an inpatient" are retained in the SEDD, even though this rarely occurs. Prior to 2010, records with a designation of "admitted as an inpatient" were excluded from the files.

Additional SEDD Notes

Unlike other HCUP outpatient databases, the 2005 and 2006 New York Ambulatory Surgery (SASD) and SEDD were processed independently of each other. As a result, any State-defined SASD records that also had evidence of ED services were not included in the SEDD. This occurred on a very small number of records within these two data years and these impacted records can be identified on the SASD using the variable HCUP_ED.