PAY2_X retains the expected secondary payer as provided by the data source. The original values have not been recoded into uniform HCUP values and are source-specific.

Two HCUP data elements contain uniformly coded information about the expected secondary payer:

• PAY2 has general categories for Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and other payers.
• PAY2_N has more detailed categories for private insurance and other payers. PAY2_N is only available in the 1988-1997 HCUP databases. This data element is discontinued beginning in the 1998 data because of the difficulty of coding the information uniformly across States.

Because the coding of expected primary and secondary payer is the same, information on the coding of PAY2_X is available under the note for expected primary payer (PAY1).

PAY2_X is included in the NIS beginning in 1998.