Source Files

The HCUP California inpatient files were constructed from the confidential files received from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD). OSHPD excluded inpatient stays that, after processing by OSHPD, did not contain a complete and "in-range" admission date or discharge date. California also excluded inpatient stays that had an unknown or missing date of birth.

OSHPD removes ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM diagnoses codes for HIV test results. Beginning with 2009 data, OSHPD changed regulations to require hospitals to report all external cause of injury diagnosis codes including those specific to medical misadventures. Prior to 2009, OSHPD did not require collection of diagnosis codes identifying medical misadventures.

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

California supplied discharge data for inpatient stays in general acute care hospitals, acute psychiatric hospitals, chemical dependency recovery hospitals, psychiatric health facilities, and state operated hospitals.

A comparison of the number of hospitals included in the SID and the number of hospitals reported in the AHA Annual Survey is available starting in data year 2010.

Hospitals do not always report data for a full calendar year. Some hospitals open or close during the year; other hospitals have technical problems that prevent them from reporting data for all months in a year.

Inclusion of Stays in Special Units

Included with the general acute care stays are stays in skilled nursing, intermediate care, rehabilitation, alcohol/chemical dependency treatment, and psychiatric units of hospitals in California. How the stays in these different types of units can be identified differs by data year.

Beginning in 2006, the information is retained in the HCUP variable HOSPITALUNIT. Reliability of this indicator for the level of care depends on how it was assigned by the hospital. For data years 1998-2006, the information was retained in the HCUP variable LEVELCARE.

Prior to 1998, the first digit of the source hospital identifier (DSHOSPID) contained information on the level of care as follows:

• General acute care (value = 1),
• Skilled nursing and intermediate care (value = 3), and
• Rehabilitation care (value = 6)