The Kids' Inpatient Database (KID) and data mining in nursing.

Abstract

Is the above statement a summary from a newspaper or magazine callout or perhaps a newsfeed headline? Neither—it is a conclusion that can be drawn from the highlights presented in a recent Statistical Brief #18 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (http://www.hcupus.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb118.jsp) whose data came from the 2009 HCUP (Healthcare Costs and Utilization Project) KID (Kids’ Inpatient Database) database. The KID is a set of pediatric hospital inpatient databases which are included within the HCUP family. These databases are created through a Federal-State-Industry partnership with AHRQ. Some of the unique features of the KID is that it is the only all-payer inpatient care database containing data from patients aged 20 years and younger. As suggested in the HCUP website, (http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/kidoverview.jsp), the KID is useful for policy research, as it allows the tracking, identification and analysis of national and state trends in healthcare. Because the sample sizes are so large, outcomes for pediatric conditions that are relatively rare (prune belly syndrome, for example) can be analyzed. Updated every three years, the first KID database (1997) contained data from 22 states. The current database (2009) has expanded to include 44 state inpatient databases and includes data from approximately 3 million hospital discharges. Variables contained in the KID include primary and secondary diagnoses; primary and secondary procedures; admission and discharge status; patient demographics including gender, age, race, median income (by ZIP code data); total charges; length of stay and hospital characteristics (e.g., ownership, size, teaching status). A manual for use of the 2009 database (Introduction to the HCUP Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) 2009) can be found at http://www.hcupus.ahrq.gov/db/nation/kid/KID_2009_Introduction.pdf.