Injury Data Sources

This section outlines the primary data sources used for injury surveillance with surveillance case definitions and frameworks.
To help navigate the vast injury data sources please see these additional tools, Injury Surveillance Data Sources and Commonly Used Data Sources for ACEs and PCEs Surveillance.

Overview of Injury Surveillance Toolkit Data Sources: Medical Administrative Discharge Data

Acute care hospitals in most jurisdictions compile electronic data on all encounters within hospital and emergency department settings specifically hospital discharges and ED visits, and make a combined jurisdiction-wide dataset available to public health agencies. These healthcare discharge data, collected primarily for administrative purposes such as obtaining reimbursement for hospital care, present opportunities to survey injuries, including drug overdoses. Jurisdiction hospital discharge data systems provide one of the best available data sources on external cause of injury for measuring the burden of nonfatal injury on society. Hospitalization and ED visit discharge data capture information on the circumstances of the injury using external cause of injury codes to classify injury events by intent and mechanism.  

Hospitalization Data
Hospitalization data are defined by the admission of a patient to a hospital for care by a medical professional. At least 90% of states maintain statewide, centralized, electronic databases of hospitalizations. The information collected varies from state to state, although many states use the standard uniform billing form (UB-04) for their hospitalization database. Others use only a subset of variables from the UB-04, and a few collect additional variables. In ICD-10-CM, when an injury diagnosis is listed, an external cause of injury code should also be provided.

Surveillance Case Definition for Injury-Related Hospitalizations

The hospitalization injury indicators should be used to identify injury-related hospitalizations, regardless of patient discharge disposition (e.g., discharged, deceased).

Injury Reporting Frameworks for Injury-Related Hospitalizations

Injury Reporting Frameworks for Injury-Related ED Visits

Emergency Department (ED) Visit Data
ED datasets collect information regarding individuals who present to an ED for care, including whether they are discharged from the ED directly or admitted to the hospital for further treatment. These data differ fundamentally from hospitalization data because they do not contain a Principal Diagnosis field
. The ED injury indicators should be used to identify injury-related ED visits, regardless of patient discharge disposition (e.g., discharged, deceased).

Surveillance Case Definition for Injury-Related ED Visits

The ED injury indicators should be used to identify injury-related ED visits regardless of patient discharge disposition (e.g., discharged, deceased).

Mortality Data

Uniform registration of deaths occurs nationwide and are provided to the
National Vital Statistics System,
and
causes of deaths
are coded and classified in accordance with the
Tenth Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10).

Surveillance Case Definitions for Mortality Data

Injury Reporting Frameworks for Mortality Data

Syndromic Surveillance
Syndromic surveillance
provides public health officials with a timely system for detecting, understanding, and monitoring health events. By tracking symptoms of patients in Emergency Departments – before a diagnosis is confirmed – public health can detect unusual levels of illness to determine whether a response is warranted.

While many jurisdictions access their Emergency Departments visit data through hospital discharge databases, many jurisdictions also or only have access to Emergency Departments visit data via syndromic surveillance systems (SyS). SyS data may include discharge data coded in ICD-10-CM, however in many jurisdictions SyS data may also contain rich free text fields (e.g., chief complaint, triage notes) or incomplete data.

Surveillance Case Definitions for Syndromic Surveillance

Injury Reporting Frameworks for Syndromic Surveillance

Additional Injury Data Sources

Additional Injury Data Sources