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 capture emergency visits at hospital-affiliated emergency departments (EDs) that do not result in hospitalization. Information about patients initially seen in the ED and then admitted to the hospital is included in the State Inpatient Databases (SID). The SEDD files include all patients, regardless of payer, providing a unique view of ED care in a State or in a defined market over time.

Developed through a Federal-State-Industry partnership sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), HCUP data inform decisionmaking at the national, State, and community levels.

This page provides an overview of the SEDD. For more details, see SEDD Database Documentation and the Introduction to the SEDD (PDF file, 515 KB; HTML)

Contents:

• About the SEDD
• SEDD Data Elements
• SEDD Areas of Research and HCUP Publications
• Purchase the SEDD
• SEDD Hardware and Software Requirements

The SEDD capture discharge information on all ED visits in a given State that do not result in an admission. States make their SEDD files available for purchase through the HCUP Central Distributor. See Availability of HCUP Data for a list of State database participation and availability by year.

Thirty-five States currently participate in the SEDD:

• The SEDD contain the ED encounter abstracts in participating States, translated into a uniform format to facilitate multi-State comparisons and analyses.
• All of the databases include abstracts from hospital-affiliated ED sites. Composition and completeness of data files may vary from State to State.
• The SEDD contain a core set of clinical and nonclinical information on all patients, including individuals covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance, as well as those who are uninsured.
• In addition to the core set of uniform data elements common to all SEDD, some State data include other elements, such as the patient's race.

Free HCUP Tools & Software are also available to identify preventable hospitalizations, estimate costs, assess quality of care and patient safety, categorize diagnoses and procedures, and identify comorbidities.

Additional information on the SEDD may be found in the Introduction to the SEDD (PDF file, 515 KB; HTML).

The SEDD contain clinical and resource-use information that is included in a typical discharge abstract, with safeguards to protect the privacy of individual patients, physicians, and hospitals (as required by data sources). The SEDD contain more than 100 clinical and non-clinical variables included in a hospital discharge abstract, such as:

• All-listed diagnoses and procedures
• Patient demographics characteristics (e.g., sex, age, and, for some States, race)
• Expected payment source
• Total charges
• Hospital identifiers that permit linkage to hospital inpatient databases, such as the AHRQ-sponsored State Inpatient Databases (SID), and to the American Hospital Association Annual Survey File

Elements included in the SEDD are not always available for all States, including the hospital county identifiers or HCUP's Revisit Variables. Please see the Availability of Data Elements by Year.

The SEDD combined with SID discharges that originate in the ED are well suited for research that requires complete enumeration of hospital-based EDs within market areas or States. The SEDD promote comparative studies of health care services and support health care policy research on a variety of topics, including:

• Injury surveillance
• Access to health care in a changing health care marketplace
• Trends and correlations between ED use and environmental events
• Emerging infections
• Occurrence of nonfatal, preventable illness
• Community assessment and planning

The SEDD are used in a variety of publications:

• HCUP Statistical Briefs highlight a variety of health topics.
• Use the HCUP Publications Search Tool to find publications using the SEDD.
• Review featured publications on the HCUP Research Spotlights page.
• Read publications by the winners of the HCUP Outstanding Article of the Year Awards.

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SEDD releases beginning in data year 1999 are available for purchase through the HCUP Central Distributor. Costs vary by State and data year.

All HCUP data users, including data purchasers and collaborators, must complete the online HCUP Data Use Agreement Training Tool, and must read and sign the Data Use Agreement for State Databases (PDF file, 206 KB; HTML).

The SEDD are available for purchase online through the HCUP Central Distributor.

Questions regarding purchasing databases can be directed to the HCUP Central Distributor:

E-mail: HCUPDistributor@AHRQ.gov
Telephone: (866) 556-4287 (toll free)
Fax: (866) 792-5313 (toll free)

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The SEDD data set comes in ASCII format and can be run on desktop computers with a DVD drive. To load and analyze the SEDD, you will need the following:

• A DVD drive
• A hard drive with one to four gigabytes of space available, depending on the SID being used
• SAS®, SPSS®, or similar analysis software

The data set comes with full documentation. SEDD documentation and tools, including programs for loading the ASCII file into SAS or SPSS, are also available on the SEDD Database Documentation page.

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