The Nationwide Emergency Department Sample The Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) is one in a family of databases and software tools developed as part of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), a Federal-State-Industry partnership sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. HCUP data inform decision-making at the national, State, and community levels. This page provides an overview of the NEDS.
Some documents are provided in Adobe® Acrobat® (PDF) format. The amount of time needed to access a document depends on your machine, browser, and Internet connection. PDF files require the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™, which can be downloaded free of charge from Adobe®. PDF Help provides instructions on how to work with PDF files. Contents: |
The Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) is a unique and powerful database that yields national estimates of emergency department (ED) visits. The NEDS was created to enable analyses of emergency department (ED) utilization patterns and support public health professionals, administrators, policymakers, and clinicians in their decision-making regarding this critical source of care. The ED serves a dual role in the U.S. healthcare system infrastructure as a point of entry for approximately 50% of inpatient hospital admissions and as a setting for treat-and-release outpatient visits.1
The NEDS excludes data elements that could directly or indirectly identify individuals, hospitals, or states. Purchase of the NEDS beginning in 2006 is open to all users who sign a Data Use Agreement (PDF, 41 KB; HTML). Users must agree to use the database for research and statistical purposes only and to make no attempts to identify individuals. 1Owens, P. and Elixhauser, A. Hospital Admissions That Began in the Emergency Department, 2003. Statistical Brief #1. February 2006. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, Md. http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb1.pdf |
Return to Contents |
The NEDS is composed of more than 100 clinical and nonclinical variables for each hospital stay. These include:
|
Return to Contents |
This NIS is constructed from the State Inpatient Databases (SID) and the NEDS is constructed from the State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD) and the State Inpatient Databases (SID). Both the NEDS and NIS include records for ED visits that resulted in an admission. The NEDS also includes ED visits that did not result in admission (e.g., treated and released, transferred to another hospital, transferred to another type of health facility, left against medical advice, or died in ED). Similar to the design of the NIS, the NEDS is built using a 20% stratified sample of institutions (for the NEDS, the institutions are hospital-based EDs). For the NEDS, all visits within the sample of selected EDs are included. So, if a hospital-based ED is selected for the NEDS sample, then all of the ED admissions from the SID and all of the ED visits from the SEDD are included in the NEDS. Both the NEDS and NIS include records for ED visits that resulted in an admission. However, the NEDS also includes ED visits that did not result in admission. Stratification for the NEDS and NIS include four of the same hospital characteristics: region, teaching status, control, and urban-rural location, but the NEDS includes a more detailed designation for metropolitan areas. While the NIS uses hospital bed size as the fifth stratifier, the NEDS uses trauma center designation. Information on ED bed size was not available. Unlike the NIS, the NEDS does not contain any state identifiers. The NEDS also does not contain the same hospitals as the NIS. Although many of the data elements found on the NIS are also available on the NEDS, data elements that are more relevant to the inpatient setting (such as the neonatal/maternal indicator) are not included in the NEDS. |
Return to Contents |
The Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) is available for purchase through the HCUP Central Distributor.
|
Return to Contents |
The NEDS generates estimates on almost 130 million ED visits (weighted), thereby making it an exceptional resource for conducting research on high-profile emergent health delivery issues. One of the most distinctive features of the NEDS is its large sample size, which allows for analysis across hospital types and the study of relatively uncommon disorders and procedures. The NEDS is a uniform, nationwide sample that promotes comparative studies of health care services and will support health care policy research on a variety of topics including:
|
Return to Contents |
NEDS data may be used by a variety of nonprofit and for-profit organizations, including:
|
Return to Contents |
The NEDS data set comes in comma-delimited (CSV) format compressed with WinZip®. In order to load and analyze the NEDS data on a computer, you will need the following:
|
Return to Contents |
The 2006-2009 NEDS are available for purchase through the HCUP Central Distributor. |
Return to Contents |
For answers to commonly asked questions regarding HCUP databases and tools, please review the HCUP Index Page. If you cannot find an answer to your question, please contact HCUP User Support Staff. To reach HCUP User Support, please contact us by e-mail or phone:
|
Return to Contents |
Internet Citation: HCUP-US NEDS Overview. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). November 2011. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/nedsoverview.jsp. |
Are you having problems viewing or printing pages on this Website? |
If you have comments, suggestions, and/or questions, please contact hcup@ahrq.gov. |
Last modified 11/8/11 |