Beginning with 2003, the format of state-specific hospital identification numbers stored in DSHOSPID includes the prefix "MED" and a four character number. Prior to 2003, Arizona hospital identification numbers (DSHOSPID) are comprised of a ten digit identification number and most DSHOSPIDs contain a dash in the third position; however the dash is inconsistently included.

If you need identifying information on Arizona hospitals beyond that which is provided in the HCUP documentation, please contact the State agency directly: Donna Courtney, Arizona Department of Health Services, courtnd@azdhs.gov.

Prior to 1998, the variable DSHOSPID is length 9 with the first digit indicating the level of care, the next two digits for state "06", and then a 6-digit hospital identifier that included the county code.

Beginning in 1998, DSHOSPID is length 6 and only contains the unique hospital identifier. The level of care indicator is retained in the HCUP variable LEVELCARE.

Regardless of whether the information on the level of care is stored in the first digit of DSHOSPID or variable LEVELCARE, the values are defined as follows:

The reliability of this indicator for the type of care depends on how it was assigned.

Prior to 1995. The type of care was assigned by California based on the hospital's licensed units and the proportion of records in a batch of submitted records that fall into each Major Diagnostic Category (MDC). Hospitals were permitted to submit discharge records in one of two ways: submit separate batches of records for each type of care OR bundle records for all types of care into a single submission. How a hospital submitted its records to California determined the accuracy of the type of care indicated in the first digit of DSHOSPID. Consider a hospital which is licensed for more than one type of care:

• If the hospital submitted one batch of records per type of care, then the distribution of each batch of discharges into MDCs would clearly indicate the type of care (acute, psychiatric, etc.). The data source could then accurately assign the first digit of DSHOSPID.
• If the same hospital submitted all of its records in one batch, then the distribution of discharges into MDCs would be a mixture of acute and other types of care. The first digit of DSHOSPID would be set to "general acute care" (value = 1) on all records and would not distinguish the types of care.

Prior to 1995, most hospitals submitted only one batch of records to California which meant that the type of care indicated in the first digit of DSHOSPID did not distinguish among types of care.

Beginning in 1995. Hospitals were required to assign type of care codes to individual records for certain discharges. These discharges included:

• general acute care (value = 1),
• skilled nursing and intermediate care (value = 3), and
• rehabilitation care (value = 6).

For discharges from facilities licensed as psychiatric care (value = 4) or alcohol/chemical dependency recovery treatment (value = 5), California continued to assign the type of care code to all discharges from the facility.

In 1997, Florida hospital identifiers for short-term acute care hospitals are coded slightly differently in its ambulatory and inpatient data. Florida ambulatory surgery data contains hospital identifiers of length 8. The Florida inpatient data contains hospital identifiers that are mostly length 6. For example:

• Ambulatory Hospital Identifier = "00100001"
• Inpatient Hospital Identifier = "100001"

Beginning in 1998, hospital identifiers that were length 6 were padded with leading zeros for consistency across data types.

In 1996 only, Iowa includes some discharges from facilities in Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. These out-of-state facilities can be separated from Iowa facilities by their five-digit DSHOSPIDs; Iowa facilities have two-, three-, or four-digit DSHOSPIDs.

Beginning with the 2011 data, hospital identifiers on the Central Distributor SID, SASD, and SEDD are only available to data purchasers whose primary affiliation is with a college, university, or government agency and whose intended use of the data does not involve product development, market research, or commercial applications. This distinction is made when you purchase the Central Distributor files.

Beginning October 1, 2017, acute physical rehabilitation cases discharged from Distinct Part Units of acute care hospitals have been separated from other discharges and reported under different DSHOSPID's. These DSHOSPID's take the form of DPRnnn, where nnn represents 3-digit numbers.

Maryland supplied the Medicare Provider Number as the unique hospital identifier.

In 2000, some values of DSHOSPID have leading blanks. These DSHOSPIDs need to be left justified to be consistent with discharges from the same DSHOSPID in 2000 and other years.

Because of the timing of HCUP data processing for the 1999 NIS, the Massachusetts source file provided to HCUP was an interim file that included records that had failed edit checks. The percent of failed records is very small, ranging from 0.0% to 1.5% (with a mean of 0.4%) for most hospitals. A handful of hospitals had a large percent of failed records. Failed records have one or more of the following errors:

• Invalid diagnosis code *
• Invalid procedure code *
• Invalid or missing birth weight
• Invalid claim certificate number **
• Invalid or inconsistent UB-92 revenue code
• Invalid medical record or person number
• Invalid type of payer *
• Inconsistent primary and secondary payer
• Invalid physician identifier
• Invalid patient or employer ZIP Code. **

* These errors would have been handled during HCUP data processing.

** These data elements are not included in the HCUP data files.

In data year 2004, Massachusetts changed the format of the state-specific hospital identification numbers stored in DSHOSPID. For the 2004 HCUP data files, the new hospital identifiers were mapped back to the previous coding scheme. Beginning with 2005 data, the new hospital identifiers are retained.

In data year 2020, Massachusetts provided 396 records in Q2 for a temporary field hospital set up to treat COVID patients.

Minnesota assigned hospital identifers specifically for the HCUP data collection process.

Beginning with data year 2020, Nebraska provided facility identifiers assigned by NHA.

Prior to data year 2020, Nebraska assigned hospital identifiers based on peer groups developed by DATABANK.

The New Jersey hospital provider identification numbers are preceded with "S" to indicate psychiatric units and "T" for rehabilitation units within the hospital.

Beginning in 2008, New York suppressed the identifier for the hospital (DSHOSPID) on records with an indication of induced abortion. These records are retained with the DSHOSPID set to "BLNK". New York identifies an indication of induced abortion by ICD-9-CM diagnosis or procedure code:

• An admitting, principal, or secondary diagnosis of "6350" through "6399", or "7796".
• A principal or secondary procedure of "690", "695", "696", "6993", "738", "7491", "750", or "9649".

North Carolina provided facility identifiers developed by the data processing contractor.

Beginning with 1995 data, Oregon changed the format of the state-specific hospital identification numbers stored in DSHOSPID. The new format is incompatible with the format used in previous years.

Rhode Island provided facility identifiers developed by the Rhode Island Department of Health.

After the 2002 Vermont SID file was created, the data source reported two issues with the data:

There are duplicate discharges in the file for the following hospitals.

A small number of discharges have incorrect information.

Included with the records of general acute care stays from community hospitals are records from alcohol dependency units, bone marrow transplant units, extended care units, psychiatric units, rehabilitation units, group health units, and swing bed units. Records for these different types of care can be identified by the fourth digit of the supplied hospital identifier (DSHOSPID) on each patient record:

Washington assigns this value to DSHOSPID based upon the type of unit discharging the patient.

Beginning with the 2019 data, West Virginia assigned new hospital identification numbers.

Due to errors in the source data, the 2005 West Virginia SID did not include the hospitals below: DSHOSPID = "010004", DSHOSPID = "010005", DSHOSPID = "010069", DSHOSPID = "010036", DSHOSPID = "010037".