The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) announces the availability of a new set of ED databases. These data provide information on all outpatient visits to hospital emergency departments in three participating states for the years 1999-2002. Known as the State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD), the data are offered through the Agency´s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), a Federal-State-Industry partnership that brings together the data collection efforts of State data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations, and the Federal government to create a national information resource of encounter-level healthcare data. The release of the SEDD enables users to investigate the continuum of care for all ED events in the same way that inpatient events can already be studied using other HCUP resources.

The SEDD feature discharge information on ED visits that do not result in admission to a hospital. Information on ED visits that result in hospital admission are included in the previously released State Inpatient Databases (SID). The SEDD contain approximately 340,000-1.7 million discharges per year, depending on the state. These data can be used to examine a wide range of health policy questions related to emergency departments, including extent of overcrowding, state-specific patterns and trends in the demand for ED services by those on Medicaid, Medicare, or uninsured, illnesses that account for the majority of urgent ED visits, and the extent of ED use following sentinel events.

Like all HCUP databases, the SEDD contain uniformly formatted data on a core set of more than 100 clinical and non-clinical variables for all patient encounters, regardless of payer (i.e., Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, self-pay). With safeguards to protect the privacy of individual patients, physicians, and hospitals, the core variables include all-listed diagnoses and procedures, patient demographics (including urban-rural location for 2002 data), expected payment source, total charges, and hospital identifiers. In addition, the SEDD can be linked to the Area Resource File and, for the Maine and Maryland SEDD, to the American Hospital Association Survey. A complete description of the SEDD and a list of data elements available by state are available on the HCUP User Support (HCUP-US) Website HCUP-US Website.

The SEDD databases would not be possible without the data collection efforts and cooperation of the Maine Health Data Organization, the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission, and the Nebraska Hospital Association. The SEDD files for Maine, Maryland, and Nebraska are available on CD-ROM and can be purchased through the HCUP Central Distributor. To determine how to obtain specific SEDD files, including the necessary Data Use Agreement forms and application kits, please contact the HCUP Central Distributor through the link provided above or at HCUPDistributor@ahrq.gov. The HCUP Central Distributor can also be reached toll-free at (866) 792-5315.

For more information, please contact Pamela Owens, Ph.D., at powens@ahrq.gov.