Discharge Data

The Division of Patient Safety and Quality collects patient level discharge data from all Illinois acute care hospitals, specialty hospitals and ambulatory surgical treatment centers. The data provide information about utilization and costs of health care services. Programs in the Illinois Department of Public Health use discharge data for surveillance, health care planning, and public reporting. The data contribute to decisions about which public health strategies for disease prevention and health promotion at the state and local level will be implemented.

Illinois Discharge Data Elements, Forms and Pricing

This page is designed to allow individuals and entities interested in obtaining Illinois discharge data for a variety of purposes the means to start the data acquisition process. This site contains information on both inpatient and outpatient data available for a wide range of uses including but not limited to research, commercial health care operations, graduate thesis preparation and support for grant development.

The data available varies by service type and discharge year, with historical discharge data consisting of inpatient data from January of 1987 and outpatient surgical data starting with discharges occurring in January of 2002. These data are based on the national standard Uniform Bill (UB) with the associated periodic enhancements.

Starting in 1987 with the UB82, the collection system was updated in 1993 with additional elements from the UB92. Data beginning with discharges occurring in October of 2007, elements from the UB04 were incorporated and remain the basis of current data collection efforts. Beginning with 2009 data, additional data elements and outpatient emergency department and observation care data are now available along with outpatient surgical data from acute care hospitals and ambulatory surgical treatment centers (ASTCs).

Release of data requires application approval, signed data use agreement and payment of the necessary fee based on data usage and entity category. Contacts for data request/application vary with the type of applicant and intended usage. Representatives of the Media should contact the IDPH Public Information Office, while all other requestors/applicants should contact the program data steward.

Case-Level Data Application Requirements

Research:

Download data Element List(s)
Historical (Pre-2009)
Current (2009 and beyond)
Visit the IDPH Institutional Review Board page to obtain necessary application documents and instructions.
In addition to the application and applicable appendices, the following documents should accompany all research applications.
Description of minimum necessary data elements
Application to and Notification from applicant's current Institutional Review Board status signed on letterhead
Study protocol citing scientific literature
Curriculum vitae for each individual accessing data in separate file(s) or a combined, bookmarked file
Approval of IDPH Internal Review Board is required prior to data release
A data use agreement specific to each application drafted and approved by IDPH Legal Services and signature by authorized staff of application entity is required prior to data release
Payment of necessary fee

Non-research:

Download data Element List(s)
Historical (Pre-2009)
Current (2009 and beyond)
- In addition to the Data Request Form, the following documents should accompany all research applications: description of data usage and any planned dissemination, resale or redistribution of aggregate output.
Description of minimum necessary data elements
A data use agreement specific to each application drafted and approved by IDPH Legal Services and signature by authorized staff of application entity is required prior to data release
Signed acknowledgement form(s) for each individual accessing data should accompany the signed data use agreement
Payment of necessary fee

Note: Documents on this site are stored in either PDF or Word format and will require the Acrobat Reader or appropriate business software for viewing. If you don't have the free reader installed, a download link can be found on the Data & Statistics page.

Important note: All forms should be submitted electronically via email attachment, scanning to PDF any documents requiring signature. Individual documents should be transmitted separately, not combined into single large PDF file. All PDFs submitted should be configured as searchable.