HCUP (Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project) training held on Thursday, April 23 at ECRI institute drew 45 attendees, including Inquirer reporter Josh Goldstein. Claudia Steiner and Chaya Merrill, two trainers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that sponsors HCUP provided the training. Steiner and Merrill provided detailed information on the six different HCUP databases and a quick demonstration of how to use “HCUPnet,” their free web-based tool. They were impressed with our level of interest and said “You should be really proud of the medical librarians in your chapter.” Following the training session, Evelyn Kuserk, ECRI Library Director, gave a tour of their facility and library.
HCUP is a suite of databases and tools that contains hospital discharge data for both the insured and uninsured on the national, state, and local level. It is useful for researching and comparing health statistics and practice patterns, health care policy and cost, patient access to health care, and health care quality.
HCUP uses data specifically from ICD-9 codes in hospital billing paperwork. These codes include detailed information on patient treatment and diagnosis as well as basic demographic data, but they have limited outcome data. States voluntarily submit data to AHRQ to use for HCUP, and some send more detailed data than others. Currently forty states are participating at various levels by sending their data to AHRQ. Pennsylvania has not participated since 2003, but the AHRQ trainers were hopeful that Pennsylvania will start participating again soon.
HCUP databases on CD consist of the following. For more detailed information on the individual databases, see the HCUP database page: http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/databases.jsp.
- Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS): 1988-2006
- Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID): 1997, 2000, 2003, 2006
- Nationwide Emergency Department Database (NEDS): 2006 (to be available later this year)
- State Inpatient Databases (SID): 1990-2006
- State Ambulatory Surgery Databases (SASD): 1997-2006
- State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD): 1999-2006
AHRQ publishes new HCUP CD databases every few years as new collections of data become available. The new CDs do not include data from previous years, so to do time frame comparisons, you would need to re-run your search across previous databases. The three national databases cost $200 each. The cost of the statewide databases vary from $20 to $3000, depending on the state.
HCUPnet (http://hcupnet.ahrq.gov/) is free and allows users to search limited collections of data that are based on the above databases. Users can search HCUPnet by specific ICD-9 codes or browse by groups of conditions. The HCUP main website also links to free topical reports and statistical briefs on specific conditions (http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports.jsp).
Although HCUP data is considered public information, AHRQ requires all users to sign a usage agreement and restricts how users publish data. These usage restrictions would prevent academic or other libraries from freely lending HCUP databases to their patrons, as libraries could be liable for making sure all users comply with the usage agreement.
Overall, attendees seemed impressed with the type of data available in HCUP. The AHRQ trainers were receptive to our questions and mentioned that many of their interface improvements have been in response to user feedback, so we can contact them with any suggestions.
Thank you to Jen de Richemond for planning this successful event and to Laura Koepfler for coordinating local arrangements. If you were unable to attend the training or would like a refresher, a free tutorial is available linked from the HCUP website (http://hcupnet.ahrq.gov/: see the “HCUPnet tutorial” link on the top right). HCUP also provides an email list to keep users up-to-date. See http://www.ahrq.gov/data/hcup/hcuplist.htm to sign up.
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