AHRQ Releases 2011 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample

AHRQ has released its 2011 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS), the largest all-payer emergency department (ED) database in the United States. The NEDS was created to provide data for analyses of ED utilization patterns and to support public health professionals, administrators, policymakers, and clinicians in their understanding of and decisionmaking about this critical source of health care. Constructed with records from AHRQ’s State Emergency Department Databases and the State Inpatient Databases, the 2011 NEDS contains data from nearly 29 million ED visits and encompasses all encounter data from more than 922 hospital-based EDs in 30 states. It approximates a 20-percent stratified sample of EDs from community hospitals. Weights are provided to calculate national estimates about the 131 million ED visits that took place in 2011. The NEDS provides information on "treat-and-release" ED visits, as well as ED visits in which the patient was admitted to the same hospital for further care. The NEDS has many research applications as it contains information on hospital and patient characteristics, geographic region, and the nature of the ED visits (e.g., common reasons for ED visits, including injuries). The database includes information on all visits to the ED, regardless of payer – including persons covered by Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and the uninsured. The 2011 NEDS is a product of AHRQ’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)and is available for purchase through the HCUP Central Distributor. Selected aggregate statistics from the NEDS can be accessed at no charge via HCUPnet.

HCUPnet: A tool for identifying, tracking, and analyzing national hospital statistics

HCUPnet: A tool for identifying, tracking, and analyzing national hospital statistics

HCUP-US Central Distributor

HCUP-US Central Distributor