ELECTIVE indicates whether the admission to the hospital was elective. This information was derived from the type of admission (ATYPE). If the admission type was missing or invalid, then ELECTIVE is also missing or invalid. If the admission type indicated an elective admission (ATYPE = 3), then ELECTIVE was set to 1. Otherwise, for any other valid non-missing ATYPE values, ELECTIVE was set to 0.

ELECTIVE could not be derived from the admission type because that information was not provided by the data source. In California, ELECTIVE was assigned based on a data element that distinguished whether an admission was scheduled or unscheduled. If the admission was scheduled, then ELECTIVE was set to 1.