Data Uses

NHCS will continue to provide national statistics on health care utilization. Additionally, it is possible to link within hospitals to measure:

Multiple inpatient admissions within and across years;
Inpatients who visited the ED within 24-72 hours of discharge;
Repeat visits to the ED; and
Care delivered in the inpatient and ED settings.

NHCS data can also be linked to outside databases such as the National Death Index (NDI) to measure 30-, 60-, or 90-day mortality post-discharge.

The linked NHCS-NDI data also provide information on cause of death. Data from NHCS would similarly be used to produce statistics like the ones featured in the reports below.

Reports

Data Examples

Exploring Hospital-based Mortality: Examples from the 2014 National Hospital Care Survey data linked to the National Death Index

Presentations

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Page last reviewed: February 15, 2022

Content source: National Center for Health Statistics