HCUP HOSPITAL IDENTIFIERS |
This section describes how HCUP reconciles the hospital identifiers used by the HCUP Partners for their statewide databases with hospital identifiers used by the American Hospital Association.
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Table of Contents
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HCUP HOSPITAL IDENTIFIERS
RECONCILING HOSPITAL IDENTIFIERS RULES FOR RESOLVING PROBLEM HOSPITALS Table of Tables Table 1. Linkages Between AHA and Data Source Identifiers Table 2. Example of Different Source Identifiers Mapped to One AHA Identifier Table 3. Example of Hospital Openings Table 4. Example of Hospital Closures Table 5. Example of Hospital Mergers Table 6. Example of Hospital Demergers Table 7. Example of Changes in Hospital Characteristics |
HCUP HOSPITAL IDENTIFIERS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The HCUP Partners determine which hospital identifiers, if any, may be released on the HCUP databases. Up to three hospital identifiers are included in the HCUP databases:
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RECONCILING HOSPITAL IDENTIFIERS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The goal is to identify an appropriate AHA hospital identifier for each source hospital in a given year.
To begin, relevant data elements are extracted from State data and from the AHA data for each year. The two elements extracted from the State data are:
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Electronic Linkage of Source and AHA Hospital Identifiers | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
First, the hospital identifiers used by the data source (herein referred to as DSHOSPID) are linked electronically to the relevant data elements extracted from the AHA Annual Survey of Hospitals data. AHA identifiers include all hospitals in the state, not just the community hospitals.
A SAS merge step is used to link the DSHOSPIDs to AHA identifiers. The specific variables used in the merge depend on the information provided by the data source. In order of preference, these variables are:
Three types of linkages result from this step, as shown in Table 1. Top | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Table 1. Linkages Between AHA and Data Source Identifiers
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Approximately 80 percent of DSHOSPIDs link to AHA identifiers in this step. (These successful links are represented by Row 1 in Table 1). The other 20 percent of DSHOSPIDs (Rows 2 and 3) must be linked manually, using the process described below.
Prior experience has shown that a large majority of the hospitals failing to link in this step will usually be of the following types:
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Resolution of Unmatched Hospitals | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The goal in this step is to identify an appropriate AHA hospital identifier for each source hospital that was not matched electronically above.
Several external sources of information are used to reconcile the unmatched source hospitals (Row 3) and the unmatched AHA hospitals (Row 2). These are:
When it is not clear what needs to be done to a hospital or group of hospitals, an AHRQ analyst is consulted. When the reconciliation process is complete:
The HCUP data element AHAID contains the hospital number used on AHA Annual Survey of Hospitals data file available through the AHA. The HCUP data element IDNUMBER contains the same identifier with the leading "6" removed. Top | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RULES FOR RESOLVING PROBLEM HOSPITALS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Following are the rules used for resolving problem hospitals. In these examples, the HCUP hospital identifier (HOSPID) starts with "SS" to indicate the state FIPS code:
The HCUP hospital identifier (HOSPID) reflects the AHA view of a hospital and is a randomly assigned number based on the AHA hospital identifier (IDNUMBER and AHAID). If the data source reports the data from facilities that are combined in the AHA hospital definition, the IDNUMBER and the HOSPID will be the same for all the facilities. In the following example, three different source identifiers are considered to be part of one facility as defined by the AHA: Top | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Table 2. Example of Different Source Identifiers Mapped to One AHA Identifier
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Openings
The AHA IDNUMBER/AHAID and HCUP HOSPID are assigned to a newly opened hospital only when the hospital has first been recognized by the AHA for a particular survey year, even if the data source supplies data for an earlier time period. For example, the data source supplied data for a hospital starting in 1989, but the AHA first recognized the hospital in 1991: Top | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Table 3. Example of Hospital Openings
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Table 4. Example of Hospital Closures
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Mergers
When two or more hospitals merge (in the AHA's view), the IDNUMBER (along with the AHAID and HOSPID) of the merged entity is assigned to all its component hospitals even if they continue reporting separately to the state. In this example, two hospitals have different source identifiers, but starting in 1990 are considered one facility by the AHA because of a merger: Top | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Table 5. Example of Hospital Mergers
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Demergers
When hospitals demerge (in the AHA's view), the component hospitals are assigned a new AHA IDNUMBER/AHAID or the one they previously had. The HCUP HOSPID follows the AHA IDNUMBER, so that the HOSPID changes if the IDNUMBER/AHAID changes and the HOSPID is reused if the IDNUMBER/AHAID is reused. In this example, a hospital demerges in 1989 into two facilities: Top | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Table 6. Example of Hospital Demergers
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Changes in Hospital Characteristics
(Note: The following decision is made only after AHRQ is consulted.) If during HCUP processing of the inpatient data, summary statistics on the distribution of length of stay look questionable for a community hospital (e.g., the mean length of stay is considerably greater than 30 days), the AHA community flag is investigated. If the AHA community flag was imputed from previous years because a hospital did not report to the AHA - and the data source can confirm that the facility is no longer a community hospital - the AHA identifier is still assigned to the facility and the community flag is imputed. In this example, the facility was considered a non-community hospital starting in 1990: Top | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Table 7. Example of Changes in Hospital Characteristics
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Internet Citation: HCUP Hospital Identifiers. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). September 2008. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/db/maphosp.jsp. |
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Last modified 9/25/08 |