DataSet

Agency For Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

NIS

HCUP databases contain patient-level information compiled in a uniform format with privacy protections in place. The Nationwide Inpatient Sample is a unique and powerful database of hospital inpatient stays. The NIS is one of the databases that make up HCUP. It includes inpatient data from a national sample of over 1,000 hospitals and includes more than 100 clinical and nonclinical variables for each hospital stay. These include primary and secondary diagnoses, primary and secondary procedures, admission and discharge status, patient demographics (e.g., gender, age, race, median income for zip code), expected payment source, total charges, length of stay, and hospital characteristics (e.g., ownership, size, teaching status). The other 2 databases that comprise the HCUP are the State Inpatient Database (SID) and the State Ambulatory Surgery Database (SASD).

United States

Annual, ongoing

Participating States provide all-payer data on hospital inpatient stays to AHRQ.

NIS can be used to identify, track, and analyze national trends in health care utilization, access, charges, quality, and outcomes.

1. Logicon/ROW Sciences. 2. Deleted search strageties from References field (1/06 crs/nlm).

One observation per discharge

NLM/crs

American Hospital Association (AHA) Hospital Identifier in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS)
Area Resource File
Elixhauser Comorbidity Software
Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP): State Inpatient Databases
State Ambulatory Surgery Databases

American Hospital Aassociation Annual Survey of Hospitals

The NIS database excludes data elements that could directly or indirectly identify individuals. Access to the files is open to all users who sign a <a href="http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/tech_assist/centdist.jsp">Data Use Agreement</a>. Users must agree to use the database for research and statistical purposes only and to make no attempts to identify individuals. Identities of institutions are available only for data sources that already make that information public or agree to its release.

The NIS is based on a stratified probability sample of hospitals, with sampling probabilities proportional to the number of U.S. community hospitals in each stratum. This universe of U.S. community hospitals is divided into strata using 5 hospital characteristics: ownership/control, bed size, teaching status, urban/rural locations, and U.S. region. It is designed to approximate a 20-percent sample of U.S. community hospitals, defined by the American Hospital Association to be "all nonfederal, short-term, general, and other specialty hospitals, excluding hospital units of institutions." Included among community hospitals are specialty hospitals such as obstetrics-gynecology, ear-nose-throat, short-term rehabilitation, orthopedic, and pediatric. Excluded are long-term hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and alcoholism/chemical dependency treatment facilities.

>= 10000. 5 million to 7.1 million inpatient stays from over 900 hospitals from up to 22 States.

SAS, SPSS, or other statistical software

National based on state discharge data files

Hospital discharge

Gender, age, race, median income for zip code

1525