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Guidelines for Interpreting Linked Crash/Hospital Data for Communities

 

 

Sources of Data

The information on the attached pages comes from the crash reports filed by law enforcement agencies and maintained by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the hospital discharge data from the state Office of Health Care Information. They have been linked using birth-date, sex, zip codes of residence and date of crash and hospital admission. No personal identifiers have been used. The linked data are housed at the Center for Health Systems Research and Analysis at the University of Wisconsin.

How to Interpret the Data

  1. The information refers to residents of the community, and not to the crash location so these numbers may not be identical to those of the local law enforcement agency.
  2. The linkage program may not capture every applicable case, so these are likely to be minimum estimates of the crashes and crash burdens to community residents.
  3. "Hospitalized cases" refer only to those individuals who were admitted to the hospital. To maintain confidentiality, where there were three or fewer cases, data are not included. There are no current linked data that show information on patients seen only in hospital emergency departments and sent home.
  4. "Hospital charges" refer only to the charges the hospital submitted for the initial stay. It does not include physician fees for operations or consultations, nor does it include any follow-up physician visits, x-rays, physical therapy, etc.
  5. Definition of Vehicle Types:

"Auto" refers to any passenger vehicle—car, van, pick-up truck—that would be

coded 1 on the MV 4000 in the "unit type" field (field 29, prior to 1994).

"Truck" is any truck, except pick-ups.

"Motorcycle" includes motorcycles and mopeds.

"Bike and Pedestrian" are self-explanatory.

 

Events that involved other vehicle types did occur, but were rare and are not included.