Illinois Department of Public Health Discharge Data
Patient encounter data on health care utilization and cost in all acute care hospitals, specialty hospitals, and ambulatory surgical clinics in Illinois.
Illinois acute care hospitals, specialty hospitals, and ambulatory surgical clinics
Access
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) hospital discharge data set includes patient encounter-level information about health care cost and utilization. To access discharge data, researchers must first engage in discussion with the appropriate IDPH staff member to assess the feasibility of the study and requested elements. Researchers must then complete a data request form and secure approval from the IDPH Institutional Review Board (IRB). In addition to the application, requests must include the following elements: a description of the minimum necessary data elements, a study protocol citing relevant literature, CVs of each individual accessing the data, as well as all necessary documentation outlined by the IDPH IRB, along with approval from the IRB at the researcher’s home institution. Finally, researchers must secure a Data Use Agreement and pay the appropriate fees to receive data.
If a study requires identified data from IDPH, researchers must include the release of medical data into the participant consent form.
Timeline for Access
The IDPH IRB meets once per quarter to review requests and may meet on an ad hoc basis if the need arises. Lead time ranges from 4-6 months depending upon completeness of the IRB Application. IDPH will not start the application process until all other IRBs affiliated with the study have approved the study application.
Lag Time
Data are updated with a six month lag time.
Cost
Cost of the data is based on complexity of data extraction and linking and is a fixed cost per the Data Product Price List. The cost per requested data set ranges from $100 to $4,500 for researchers, with addition hourly cost based on customization of elements and data linkage. Simple aggregated data requiring less than 1 hour of unit time may be released without charge; greater than 1 unit hour will accrue an hourly unit cost.
Linking
Linking between IDPH data and other data sets is typically performed by an IDPH staff member or by the researcher under supervision of an IDPH staff member. Identifiers will be stripped from the match in this process.
Identifiers Available for Linking
- Patient first name
- Patient last name
- Gender
- Date of birth
- Other variables may be used to increase output reliability
Linking to Outside Data Sources
IDPH does not provide linking to discharge data and other data sets maintained by the Department as a service.
Data Contents
The availability of variables depends on the type of service and year of discharge. Data on inpatient discharges are available January 1987 onwards, outpatient surgical data is available January 2002 onwards, whereas data from 2009 onwards include outpatient emergency and observation care data, as well as outpatient surgical data from acute care hospitals and ambulatory surgical treatment centers.
Partial List of Variables
Patient demographics, diagnosis and procedure codes, facility information, procedure, admit and discharge date and time, crime victim indicator, breakdown of charges, payer type
J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set
Unknown