About NHCS

The National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) is a new survey that will describe national patterns of health care delivery in hospital-based settings and in freestanding ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs).  Data will be collected on hospitals, ASCs, their inpatients, and their care, providing national estimates of service use and allowing policy-makers and researchers to study relationships between the organization and delivery of health care.  NHCS will integrate data collected from the National Hospital Discharge Survey and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. A new sample of hospitals is currently being recruited for this survey.  During the first two years of the survey, hospitals will be asked to provide data on all inpatients from their UB-04 administrative database, as well as hospital characteristics through a facility questionnaire. In 2013, besides the UB-04 data, the sampled hospitals will be asked to provide data on the utilization of health care provided in their emergency and outpatient departments (EDs and OPDs), and ambulatory surgery locations. Additionally in 2013, a sample of freestanding ASCs will be recruited and inducted.

NHCS will continue to provide nationally representative data on utilization of hospital care, inpatient care, and care delivered in EDs, OPDs, and hospital-based and/or free-standing ASCs. The collection of personal identifiers (protected health information) will allow the linkage of episodes of care provided to the same patient in the ED and/or OPD and/or ASC and as an inpatient, as well as linkage of cases to the National Death Index to measure post-discharge mortality, and Medicare and Medicaid data. Obtaining all inpatient UB-04 data from a hospital also will allow the sampling of hospital discharges with specific diagnoses and procedures for special studies that will use medical record abstraction to collect more specific clinical data.

Selected Participants

Has your hospital been selected to take part in the National Hospital Care Survey?

Health Information Management (HIM) Professionals

Are you an HIM professional?  You can earn Continuing Education Credits!

Questionnaires, Datasets, and Related Documentation

2011

UB-04 administrative claims data for all inpatient records will be collected from a new sample of 500 hospitals.

Historical Microdata

To access historical microdata and related documentation for the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) please follow the links below:

• NHDS “Questionnaires, Datasets, and Related Documentation”
• NHAMCS “Questionnaires, Datasets, and Related Documentation”

Survey Results and Products

For NHCS data:

For historical survey results and products produced by the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) please follow the links below:

• NHDS “Survey Results and Products”
• NHAMCS “Survey Results and Products”