WISQARS™ Cost of Injury Reports Help Menu
1. Cost of Injury Reports – Overview
WISQARS Cost of Injury Reports allows users to interactively produce estimates of the costs associated with injury-related deaths, hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits. Estimates can be based entirely on system-provided data, or can alternatively be based on a combination of system-provided data and user-provided data. Under the first approach, WISQARS uses year 2010 vital statistics data (from the National Center for Health Statistics) describing injury-related deaths, and year 2010 ED surveillance data (from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System – All Injury Program) describing injuries resulting in hospitalization or transfer for specialized care subsequent to ED treatment and injuries resulting in an ED visit where the patient was treated and released (without hospitalization or other transfer).1,2 The resulting cost estimates therefore represent the year 2010 and are expressed in year 2010 prices. For further information about the national data sources, see Section 5. Under the second approach, final cost estimates are produced by combining system-generated average (per case) cost estimates with user-provided injury case counts. The user-provided counts are entered using custom-generated data entry screens and can represent a single year or a range of years; the final cost estimates can be optionally inflated or deflated to represent years other than 2010.
For any of the injury outcomes (death, hospitalization, ED treatment followed by release) cost-of-injury estimates can be generated:
- for all injuries combined,
- by selected intent (manner) of injury combined with selected mechanism (cause) of injury, or
- by selected body region combined with selected nature of injury (diagnosis).
Cost estimates can be further tailored by specifying one or more of the following:
- geographic coverage,
- sex, and
- age (all ages, fixed 5-year age groups alone or in combination, and custom age ranges).
Estimates can represent:
- lifetime medical costs, and/or
- lifetime work loss costs, and/or
- combined costs (lifetime medical plus lifetime work loss)
and can be presented in the form of:
- totals (for all injuries covered by each reporting category), and/or
- averages (per case; available for reports based exclusively on system-provided data).
Depending on the geographic coverage, cost estimates for injury-related deaths can variously be expressed in:
- U.S. prices (nationally representative),
- regional prices (representing one specific multi-state census region), or
- state prices (representing one specific state).
Options are also provided which allow customization of the row and column layout of the resulting reports. While viewing a report, there are also options that allow you to print or export the cost estimates.
WISQARS Cost of Injury Reports