Texas Emergency Department Data

Texas Health Care Information Collection
Center for Health Statistics

The 2014–15 General Appropriations Act, S.B. 1, 83rd Texas Legislature, Regular Session, 2013 (Article II, Department of State Health Services [DSHS], Rider 93) specified that DSHS shall collect hospital emergency department (ED) data as set forth in Chapter 108, Texas Health and Safety Code (THSC). DSHS currently collects inpatient and outpatient data from hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers. DSHS began collecting ED data from hospitals on January 1, 2015 per 25 Texas Administrative Code (TAC), Sections 421.71-421.78, and in conjunction with the collection of inpatient and outpatient data.

In accordance with Health and Safety Code, Section 108.012(b), "the department may charge a person requesting public use or provider quality data a fee for the data.  The fees may reflect the quantity of information provided and the expense incurred by the department in collecting and providing the data. The executive commissioner by rule and shall be set the fees at a level that will raise revenue sufficient for the operation of the department.  The department may not charge a fee for providing public use data to another Texas state agency.  Chapter 108 may be viewed by clicking here.

The Hospital Emergency Department (ED) Public Use Data Files (PUDF)  include data from Inpatient PUDF and the Outpatient PUDF. The Inpatient PUDF contains patient-level information for patients which were admitted into the hospital for care. The inpatient hospital stay may last several hours to days, weeks or years, depending upon the condition or status of the patient before being discharged, transferred or expired; the Outpatient PUDF contains patient-level information for outpatient services that do not go more than twenty-four (24) hours from the time they are being treated in the hospital or ambulatory surgery center (ASC).

The Hospital ED PUDF is currently available for the first quarter 2016 through fourth quarter 2020.  The first quarter 2021 is tentatively scheduled to be released December 2021.

Purchasing the Hospital ED PUDF requires a completed Order Form, which includes a Data Use Agreement.  

• Data Summary for Inpatient (IP), Outpatient (OP) and Emergency Department
  
• Emergency Department (ED) PUDF Order Form (PDF, 295 KB)

Information on the data fields is included in the user manual available below.

The 2020 Hospital ED PUDF contains:

• ED PUDF User Manual, 2020

The 2019 Hospital ED PUDF contains:

• ED PUDF User Manual, 2019

The 2018 Hospital ED PUDF contains:

• ED PUDF User Manual, 2018

The 2017 Hospital ED PUDF contains:

• ED PUDF User Manual, 2017
  
  

Technical Update

An update has been released for the third quarter 2019.  THCIC found that thirty (30) of the eighty (80) duplicates Outpatient data records in the 3^rd quarter Outpatient 2019 data are ED Outpatient data. THCIC also found that sixty-one (61) of those seventy-nine (79) missing records from the 3^rd quarter Outpatient 2019 data are ED Outpatient data. Therefore, THCIC reran the 3^rd quarter ED Outpatient 2019 data to remove the duplicates and add the sixty-one (61) missing records to create a new 3rd quarter ED Outpatient 2019 data. THCIC will send you (fixed-length and tab-delimited files):

• A new 3^rd quarter ED Outpatient 2019 data named “ED-OP_base3q2019.txt” and a classification file named “ED-OP_classification_3q2019.txt”;
• A dataset containing only the thirty (30) duplicate records (all data fields from the Base file) removed from the 3^rd quarter ED Outpatient 2019 data named “ed_op_3q2019_dups.txt” and a classification file for the thirty (30) duplicate records named “ed-op_classification_dups_3q2019.txt”;
• A dataset containing only the sixty-one (61) missing records (all data fields from the Base file) added to the new 3^rd quarter ED Outpatient 2019 data named “ed_op_3q2019_miss.txt” and a classification file for the sixty-one (61) missing records named “ed_op_classification_miss_3q2019.txt”.
  
  

The thirty (30) duplicates Records ID removed from the 3^rd quarter ED Outpatient 2019 data are listed in Table2 of the excel file named “THCIC ED 3Q2019 Duplicates Record IDs Addenda”. 

• Third quarter, 2019 - ED Update Excel (10 KB)

An update has been released for the first quarter 2019 “ED Facility_type1q2019.txt” and “ED Facility_type1q2019_tab.txt” files. A number of facilities that submitted data were not included in those files. The update contains the correct reporting of the facilities and facility type information for the 1Q2019 Emergency Department Facility Type files. All other data files were correctly reported and in the appropriate data files. Released February 18, 2020

• First quarter, 2019 - Fixed Length Text Files and Tab-Delimited Text Files

Data Purchasers

The list of organizations includes a variety of organizations that use the data for analysis. The listing includes recipients from 2003 through December 31, 2020. This list is updated annually. (February 12, 2021)

If you have suggestions or comments regarding ED PUDF data, please submit them to THCIC.