Consolidating Emergency Department-specific Data to Enable Linkage with Large Administrative Datasets.

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Data Linkage and Analysis
• Emergency Medicine

Background:

• Merging diverse healthcare databases (AHA, CMS, NEDI) is vital for comprehensive analysis.
• Challenges exist in aligning individually listed EDs with hospital-network-grouped EDs.
• Consolidating grouped ED data is preferable to exclusion for maintaining data representativeness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To consolidate National Emergency Department Inventory (NEDI) data for linkage with administrative datasets.
• To assess the impact of excluding grouped Emergency Departments (EDs) on summary results.
• To enable robust health services research on patient outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the 2014 NEDI-USA database for New England EDs.
• Individually matched NEDI EDs with American Hospital Association (AHA) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data.
• Consolidated data for "group matches" (multiple NEDI EDs to one facility ID) using sums or weighted averages.

Main Results:

• Of 195 New England EDs, 169 completed the NEDI survey.
• 39 EDs (23%) were part of groups, exhibiting larger patient volumes and beds, and were more likely to be freestanding and non-rural.
• Consolidated data (149 observations representing 171 EDs) yielded summary results similar to individually listed EDs.

Conclusions:

• Excluding grouped EDs would create a non-representative dataset.
• Consolidated NEDI data enables linkage with administrative datasets for advanced research.
• This approach facilitates studies on hospital-based specialties and patient outcomes, advancing health services research.