• Sheps Center
> Data > NC Hospital Discharge Data > Data Access Guidelines

Data Access Guidelines

The NC Discharge databases are not public records. 

Researchers and graduate students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and other universities, are encouraged to use the NC Hospital Discharge Data for public health research. Project proposals must be submitted for prior approval in order to assure the feasibility of the proposed research. Researchers can also obtain the NC data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), a state-federal-industry database partnership conducted through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). See www.ahrq.gov/data/hcup for ordering information.

Access Rules and Fees

Fees noted below are for requests for Entire Standard Discharge Level File or Subset of data variables (as defined by study needs). This does not include analysis of data or specialized data set creation. For all internal UNC requests, additional analytic time beyond basic extract and data preparation is charged at $98/hour. For external requests, the rate is $153 per hour. These fees support data storage, security, management and analyst preparation of the data.

^*A “seat” roughly equates to one project-user. The same user working on multiple projects may be required to pay for a seat for each project. On the other hand, one project may only need one seat for multiple users depending on the project’s scope. Please reach out to Sheps staff to understand expected fees for your planned project. Sheps is committed to making healthcare services data available to UNC Researchers.
^**The NC Hospital Discharge Data cannot be used for competitive purposes or market type research. Competitive or market research requests are always referred to Truven Health Analytics (State Data Processor).

Requestor Type	Initial Consultation and Basic ETL (up to 10 hours)	Additional ETL/Analytics	First 5 years of data	Additional years of data	DUA Requirement	Data Access	Data Access Fees
UNC-Chapel Hill Researchers (incl. graduate students)	Unfunded: $0 Funded: $98/hour	$98/hour	Unfunded: $0 Funded: $500 per dataset-year	$500 per dataset-year/td>	Internal DUA signed by PI	Data accessed via the Sheps Secure Research Computing Cluster	$5,500/seat/year*
Other University Researcher/Faculty	$153/hour	$153/hour	$500/year/dataset	$500/year/dataset	External DUA via UNC Office of Sponsored Programs	Data sent via SFTP and subject to DUA terms	$153 per file transfer
Graduate Students at any North Carolina-based Institute of Learning	Unfunded: $0 Funded: $98/hour	$98/hour	Unfunded: $0 Funded: $500 per dataset-year	$500 per dataset-year	External DUA via UNC Office of Sponsored Programs Must be supervised by faculty advisor	Data sent via SFTP and subject to DUA terms	$153 per file transfer
Graduate Students outside NC	Unfunded: $0 Funded: $98/hour	$153/hour	$200 per dataset-year	$500 per dataset-year	External DUA via UNC Office of Sponsored Programs Must be supervised by faculty advisor	Data sent via SFTP and subject to DUA terms	$153 per file transfer
Other Organizations**	$153/hour	$98/hour	Non-Profit: $500 per dataset-year For-Profit: $1,500 per dataset-year	$500/year/dataset	External DUA via UNC Office of Sponsored Programs	Data sent via SFTP and subject to DUA terms	$153 per file transfer