The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) announces the release of the 2005 National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) micro-data file and documentation. The NHDS is an annual survey of inpatient hospital use that has been conducted continuously since 1965. The survey covers inpatients discharged from a national probability sample of nonfederal, short-stay hospitals in the 50 states and Washington, D.C. Data are collected on hospitals, the patients they serve, and the inpatient care delivered. The 2005 public use file contains data from 375,000 inpatients receiving care at 444 hospitals. These data can be used to produce unbiased, national estimates of inpatient hospital services delivered, and to examine the ways that hospital service delivery varies over time and according to patient and hospital characteristics. Hospital variables available for analysis include ownership and bed size. Patient variables include demographic characteristics, primary and secondary diagnoses, expected source of payment, and source and type of admission. Variables describing the use of care and other aspects of clinical management include procedures performed, length of stay, and inpatient mortality.
A downloadable data file in ASCII format is available, along with complete survey documentation. For SAS users, a SAS program is also available on the web for data input. Links to the data file and documentation can be accessed at the NHDS homepage: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/major/hdasd/nhds.htm
The NHDS is one component of the National Health Care Surveys, a family of surveys which collect data on health care providers, their patients, and the care delivered across the spectrum of health care providers. For information on long term care, inpatient care, ambulatory surgery, and ambulatory medical care components of the National Health Care Surveys, please visit www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhcs.htm.
