The healthcare cost and utilization project: an overview

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Health Economics
• Public Health Policy

Background:

• The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) is a family of databases.
• It includes inpatient and outpatient discharge records for insured and uninsured patients.
• HCUP is a partnership between the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and state organizations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess healthcare quality, utilization, and costs.
• To analyze variations in medical treatments and technology diffusion.
• To study the impact of health policies and access to care.

Main Methods:

• Utilizes multistate inpatient (SID, NIS, KID) and outpatient (SASD, SEDD) discharge records.
• Data includes patient demographics, clinical information, diagnoses, procedures, and facility charges.
• Analysis can be conducted at the patient, physician, market, and state levels.

Main Results:

• HCUP provides the largest collection of all-payer, uniform, state-based inpatient and ambulatory surgery administrative data.
• Enables research on a wide range of healthcare topics, including rare illnesses and special populations.
• Facilitates the study of small area variations in care.

Conclusions:

• The data lacks detailed clinical information (e.g., disease stage, vital statistics) and laboratory/pharmacy data.
• Patient tracking across different settings and over time can be inconsistent.
• Access is available to all users who agree to the Data Use Agreement, with some data accessible via HCUPnet.