EPIC's main data sets include fatal and hospitalized nonfatal injuries. We identify fatal cases by searching the death certificates of California residents for any record where the underlying cause of death was an injury (defined as cases where there was an E-Code as the underlying cause of death). Similarly, we identify nonfatal injuries by searching hospital discharge data (HDD) for records where a California resident was hospitalized for an injury (an E-Code was present in the record). To make sure we do not include an injury event twice, cases that died in the hospital are removed from our HDD data. Thus our fatal and nonfatal data sets should be mutually exclusive. We also exclude injuries due to adverse effects of medical encounters and drugs.

Prior to 1999, both fatal and nonfatal causes of injury were coded using ICD-9 E-Codes. Beginning in 1999, deaths were coded using ICD-10 (V, W, X and Y Codes), while hospitalizations continued to use ICD-9 E-Codes. This poses problems both in the continuity of death data across time as well as in comparisons between fatal and nonfatal injuries in 1999 and beyond.

Tips for Using This Web Site

• Tips for using the Custom Table Builders

About Our Data

• Summary of updates and changes to the web site and data sets
• Fatal data (from California Vital Statistics)
• Hospitalized Nonfatal data (from the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development's Patient Discharge Data Set)
• Linked Homicide data
• Population data come from the California Department of Finance
• EPIC's ICD-9 AND ICD-10 injury cause definitions

Still Need Help?

If these pages don't answer your questions, or if you need help interpreting data you got from this site, e-mail us at epic@dhs.ca.gov.