Source Files

The Office of Health Care Statistics, Utah Department of Health provides ambulatory surgery (AS) and emergency department (ED) records to HCUP in two separate files. One file contains information on selected ambulatory surgeries occurring in hospital-owned ambulatory surgery facilities and nonhospital-owned ambulatory surgery facilities. The second file contains ED encounters (identified by an ED revenue flag based on the range 450 to 459). If a patient comes into the ED and has an ambulatory surgery, that record is included in the AS file. If a patient comes into the ED and also has evidence of observation services (OS), that record is included in the ED file, however these records cannot be identified specifically.

Beginning with 2015 data, the Utah Partner organization has requested that data elements AGE, FEMALE and ZIP are set to missing (blank) in the Central Distributor SEDD when the record contains an indication of substance abuse or HIV infection.

Outpatient Data File Provided to HCUP by the Partner

For the 2018 data year, a major health system submitted records for a broad group of ambulatory surgical procedures to the Utah Department of Health. The additional records substantially increased the size of the ambulatory surgery file that was submitted to HCUP. Utah is in the process of forming a more precise definition of an ambulatory surgery record to be used by all of their health systems.

Selection of Records for Inclusion in the SEDD

The Utah Department of Health provides HCUP with one outpatient file in which ED records are included with records for other nonemergent outpatient services. All records identified by Utah as ED are included in the SEDD (HCUP data element STATE_ED=1 based on the ED revenue 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

Utah collects emergency department data from all 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 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 with 2015 data, records for ED admissions are no longer provided on the ED data file and subsequently do not need to be excluded prior to processing. Prior to 2015 data, HCUP excluded records in the ED data file with an encounter type value indicating inpatient. These records pertained to patients that were admitted directly to the hospital from the ED.