What are the SEDD?

The State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD) are part of the family of databases and software tools developed for the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). The SEDD are a set of longitudinal State-specific emergency department databases included in the HCUP family. The SEDD capture discharge information on all emergency department visits that do not result in an admission. Information on patients seen in the emergency room and then admitted to the hospital is included in the State Inpatient Databases (SID).

Address Critical Topics

Rely on the SEDD to study State-level emergency department issues, including:

• Injury surveillance
• Access to care
• Trends and correlations between emergency department use and environmental events
• Emerging infections
• Occurrence of nonfatal, preventable illness
• Community assessment and planning
• Use of hospital services
• Impact of health policy changes
• Diffusion of medical technology

Advance Your Research

Apply more than 100 clinical and nonclinical variables to your research, including:

• All-listed diagnoses and procedures
• Patient demographic characteristics such as sex, age, and (for some States) race
• Total charges
• Expected payer
• Length of stay
• Discharge disposition

A Comprehensive, User-Friendly Resource

Each participating State's SEDD captures emergency visits at hospital-affiliated emergency departments in that State that   do not result in hospitalization. To facilitate multistate comparisons and analyses, data are translated into a uniform, user friendly-format. Available annually since 1999, SEDD files include all patients, regardless of payer, thus providing a unique view of emergency department care in a defined market or State over time.

Expand Your Analyses

Use HCUP Tools. Free tools and software are available to supplement the SEDD for research that aims to assess quality of care and identify revisits or readmissions. Many of these tools can also be used with other administrative health care databases. 

Link to Other data. Information from sources such as the American Hospital Association Annual Survey Database and the Area Health Resources Files can be linked to some of the SEDD to enhance your analyses.

Investigate the Continuum of Care. Combine SEDD data with other HCUP State databases such as the State Inpatient Databases or the State Ambulatory Surgery and Services Databases to reveal a more complete picture of care.

Easy to Purchase

HCUP's SEDD are available for purchase from the online HCUP Central Distributor: www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/tech_assist/centdist.jsp. The HCUP Central Distributor is the entity that accepts, processes, and fulfills applications for the purchase and use of HCUP databases. Each State database is sold separately.

SEDD data are provided on CD/DVD in ASCII format. A statistical software package, such as SAS®, SPSS®, or Stata®, is required for analysis. Programs to load data into software packages are provided.

For a list of prices (including discounted student rates) and complete purchasing information, visit the HCUP-US website: www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov. This site also provides access to aggregate statistics from the SEDD through the free online query resource known as HCUPnet, and it contains detailed information about the Data Use Agreement, data elements, and software tools.



The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP, pronounced "H-Cup") is a family of powerful health care databases, software tools, and products for advancing research. Sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), HCUP includes the largest all-payer, encounter-level collection of longitudinal health care data (inpatient, ambulatory surgery, and emergency department) in the United States, beginning in 1988.

HCUP is a Federal-State-Industry Partnership that brings together the data collection efforts of many organizations — such as State data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations, and the Federal Government — to create a national information resource. HCUP would not be possible without the contributions of data collection Partners from across the nation.

For more information about HCUP, please visit www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov.