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Central Distributor SID: Description of Data Elements

 
LEVELCARE - Level of patient care, as received from source
 
Documentation Sections:
General Notes
Uniform Values
State Specific Notes
General Notes
 

The level of patient care (LEVELCARE) is retained as provided by the data source. The original values are not recorded unto uniform HCUP values and are source-specific.

 
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Uniform Values
 
VariableDescriptionValueValue Description
LEVELCARELevel of patient care, as received from sourcen(a)State specific coding - See the "State Specific Notes" section for details
 
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State Specific Notes

California

Beginning in 2006, the variable LEVELCARE was renamed HOSPITALUNIT.

Prior to 1998, the variable LEVELCARE was not included in the HCUP databases. Information on the level of care was contained in the first digit of the California hospital identifier (DSHOSPID).

The values of LEVELCARE are defined as follows:

0= Type of unit unknown
1= General acute care
2= Not a valid code
3= Skilled nursing and intermediate care (long term care)
4= Psychiatric care
5= Alcohol/chemical dependency recovery treatment
6= Acute physical medicine rehabilitation care.


California hospitals were required to assign type of care codes to individual records for certain discharges.

These discharges included:

  • general acute care (value = 1),
  • skilled nursing and intermediate care (value = 3), and
  • rehabilitation care (value = 6).

For discharges from facilities licensed as psychiatric care (value = 4) or alcohol/chemical dependency recovery treatment (value = 5), California assigns the type of care code to all discharges from the facility.


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Internet Citation: HCUP Central Distributor SID Description of Data Elements - All States. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). August 2008. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/db/vars/siddistnote.jsp?var=levelcare.
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Last modified 8/12/08