Data Documentation

2023 Data Documentation

Downloads

Data Documentation from Previous Years

Types of Data

Patient Discharge Data (PDD)

The Patient Discharge Dataset consists of a record for each inpatient discharge from a California-licensed hospital. Licensed hospitals include general acute care, acute psychiatric, chemical dependency recovery, and psychiatric health facilities. For more information on the data and reporting requirements, see the California Inpatient Data Reporting Manual. These datasets are available starting in 1983.

For detailed information about the data elements within the PDD, view the data dictionaries below.

Emergency Department (ED) Data 

The emergency department dataset includes demographic, clinical, payer, and facility information from hospitals licensed to provide emergency medical services. The ED encounters include those patients who had face-to-face contact with the provider. In the event that the patient left without being seen, the patient would not have had a face-to-face encounter with a provider and therefore the ED encounter would not be reported. A provider is defined as the person who has primary responsibility for assessing and treating the condition of a patient at a given contact and exercises independent judgment in the care of the patient. Providers include medical doctors, doctors of osteopathy, doctors of dental surgery, or doctors of podiatric medicine. If the ED encounter resulted in a same-hospital admission, the ED encounter would be combined with the inpatient record and a separate ED record would not be reported. When analyzing ED records, you may want to include the records identified in the inpatient database as having the hospital’s own ED as the source of admission. For more information on the data and reporting requirements, see the California Emergency Department and Ambulatory Surgery Data Reporting Manual. These datasets are available beginning January 2005.

For detailed information about the data elements within the ED, view the data dictionaries below.

Ambulatory Surgery (AS) Data 

The ambulatory surgery dataset includes encounters from general acute care hospitals and licensed freestanding Ambulatory Surgery Centers, during which at least one ambulatory surgery procedure is performed. A freestanding ambulatory surgery clinic is defined as a surgical clinic licensed by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). Many facilities that are called ambulatory surgery centers are not required to be licensed as surgical clinics and do not report data to the Office. An ambulatory surgery procedure is defined as those procedures performed on an outpatient basis in the general operating rooms, ambulatory surgery rooms, endoscopy units, or cardiac catheterization laboratories of a hospital or a freestanding ambulatory surgery clinic. If a procedure was done elsewhere (such as in a radiology unit), no ambulatory surgery record is required to be filed. If a hospital-based AS encounter resulted in a same-hospital admission, the AS encounter would be combined with the inpatient record and a separate AS record would not be reported. When analyzing hospital-based AS records, you may want to include AS direct admissions, which are identified in the hospital’s inpatient data as having Ambulatory Surgery at the same hospital as the source of admission. For more information on the data and reporting requirements, see the California Emergency Department and Ambulatory Surgery Data Reporting Manual. These datasets are available beginning January 2005.

For detailed information about the data elements within the AS, view the data dictionaries below.

Patient-Level Data Quality and Error Tolerance Levels

The HCAI Patient-level data files are subjected to more than 1,000 edits to assess quality and must be below a two percent error tolerance level, specified in regulation, to be accepted.  HCAI staff actively monitor the data through the submission process to flag potential data quality issues and engage directly with health care facility staff to address them.  If more than two percent of records have edit flags, then the data submission fails, and data re-submission is required.  Data that were flagged with errors that were under the error tolerance may remain in data that has been approved.  Any record remaining with an invalid admission date is deleted.  All other invalid data elements that remain are defaulted to blank or zero.  

For additional information on patient level data reporting requirements and edits please visit Patient-Level Administrative Data.

Modifications

Some facilities may be unable to complete specific fields as required, may be unable to correct data to meet the error tolerance level, or may otherwise be determined to be out of compliance at the time of reporting.  In these cases, a modification to patient level data reporting requirements may be granted and related edits may be overridden to allow the submitted report to be approved. 

In addition, anomalies may be identified in historical HCAI data, which may result in a retroactive modification being documented.  These Modifications are made available to data users in the Patient-Level Data Modifications Table.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

In the patient-level SAS data sets, why are external cause and diagnosis variables different lengths in the PDD and ED/AS Data Sets?

It has to do with how the data is extracted for the submission system. In the near future, system changes to prepare for ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCA coding will result in the diagnosis codes and the external cause codes being a consistent length across PDD, ED and AS datasets.

Why is Facility Number a 9-digit variable in HCAI’s financial and utilization databases and a 6-digit variable in the patient-level PDD and ED/AS databases?

OSHPD’s financial and utilization databases begin with a 3-digit number that indicates the “type of facility” (106=hospital, 206=long term care, 306 = clinic, 406 = home health/hospice agency). The last six digits are the Facility Number that is issued by HCAI; this number is also used in the PDD & ED/AS Data Sets. The first two digits indicate the county in which the facility operates. The last four digits are assigned by HCAI to identify the facility. The PDD and ED/AS databases do not have a “type of facility” indicator.

Why do hospitals have the same license number/HCAI facility number even though they operate on geographically distinct campuses? Why do hospitals that have identical license numbers/HCAI facility numbers in HCAI’s PDD and ED/AS data have different HCAI IDs in the Facility Listings report?

Upon meeting certain criteria (e.g., a single governing body, administration, medical staff, and close proximity), the California Department of Public Health may issue a consolidated license to multiple hospital locations, whereby a single location is designated as the Parent Facility and each remaining location is designated as a Consolidated Facility. Approximately 60 hospitals are operating with a consolidated license. These facilities report data to HCAI as either separate entities or aggregated, as one consolidated provider, depending on the type of data they are reporting.

  • When reporting patient-level data to HCAI, each consolidated facility can elect to report as either a separate entity or aggregated, as one consolidated provider, under the HCAI Facility Number of the Parent Facility. Usually, facilities elect to combine on an all-or-nothing basis, but this is not always the case.
  • When reporting utilization data to HCAI, multiple hospital locations that operate under a consolidated license must submit a separate report for each location. The hospital name, address and facility number is automatically entered into the ALIRTS database from HCAI’s Licensed Facility Information System (LFIS), based on data from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). HCAI’s Facility Listings report is also based on the LFIS data.
  • When reporting financial data to HCAI, hospitals are permitted to report under the HCAI Facility Number of the Parent Facility since facilities that operate under a consolidated license typically use an integrated accounting system.

Why don’t the ED/AS datasets include ICD procedure codes?

The ED and AS datasets include CPT-4 procedure codes, not ICD procedure codes. For more information, see the documentation for Principal Procedure and Other Procedure provided by the data submission system.