National Hospital Care Survey

National Hospital Care Survey

The National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) is designed to provide accurate and reliable health care statistics that answer key questions of interest to health care and public health professionals, researchers, and health care policy makers. This includes tracking the latest trends affecting hospitals and health care organizations and factors that influence the use of health care resources, the quality of health care, and disparities in health care services provided to population subgroups in the United States.

NHCS collects data on patient care in hospital-based settings to describe patterns of health care delivery and utilization in the United States. Settings include inpatient, emergency (EDs), and outpatient departments (OPDs). The survey will provide hospital utilization statistics for the Nation. In addition, NHCS will also be able to monitor national trends in substance use-related ED visits including opioid visits. Researchers can link these survey data to outside data sources such as the National Death Index (NDI) to obtain a more complete picture of patient care.

Several years of data from NHCS have been successfully linked to NDI and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data and are now available to researchers through the Research Data Center.

Check out the NHCS Overview Flyer [PDF – 177 KB].

Has your hospital been selected to take part in the National Hospital Care Survey? Check out our How to Participate in NHCS page!

National Health Care Surveys Registry

The National Health Care Surveys (including NAMCS, NHAMCS, and NHCS) are working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs: Promoting Interoperability (PI) (formerly known as Meaningful Use (MU) and the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). Click here to find out more.