Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project

The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP, pronounced "H-Cup") is a family of health care databases and related software tools and products from the United States that is developed through a Federal-State-Industry partnership and sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

HCUP provides access to health care databases for research and policy analysis, as well as tools and products to enhance the capabilities of the data.

HCUP databases combine the data collection efforts of State data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations, and the Federal government to create a national information resource of patient-level health care data. State organizations that provide data to HCUP are called HCUP Partners.

HCUP includes the largest collection of multi-year hospital care (inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department) data in the United States, with all-payer, encounter-level information beginning in 1988. These databases enable research on a broad range of health research and policy issues at the national, state, and local market levels, including cost and quality of health services, medical practice patterns, access to health care, and outcomes of treatments.

Additionally, AHRQ has developed a comprehensive set of software tools to be used when evaluating hospital data. AHRQ's free software tools can be used not only with the HCUP databases, but also with other administrative databases. HCUP's Supplemental Files are only for use with HCUP databases.

The HCUP User Support Website is the main repository of information for HCUP. It is designed to answer HCUP-related questions; provide detailed information on HCUP databases, tools, and products; and offer technical assistance to HCUP users. HCUP’s tools, publications, documentation, news, services, and HCUPnet (the free online data query system) may all be accessed through HCUP-US. The Website also provides information on how to obtain HCUP databases.

HCUP-US is located at http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov.

To help researchers and policymakers discover and use HCUP’s data, tools, and products to their fullest potential, HCUP developed a free, interactive online course that provides an overview of the features, capabilities, and potential uses of HCUP. The course is modular, so users can either move through the entire course or access exactly the resources in which they are most interested. The Overview Course can work both as an introduction to HCUP data and tools and a refresher for established users.

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