National Data on Hospitalizations
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is pleased to announce the availability of 2004 data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS). Data from the NHDS are used to profile hospital use, conditions resulting in hospitalization, disparities in use, diffusion of new technologies, and trends over time.
In addition to announcing the availability of public use data files, a new NCHS report released this month provides key estimates for 2004 and highlights trends affecting patients age 65 and over. Findings show that while hospitalization rates declined for all other age groups, rates increased 24 percent for the elderly during the period from 1970 through 2004 (despite a temporary decrease in the 1980s). Though persons age 65 and over comprised 12 percent of the US population in 2004, they accounted for 38 percent of all hospital discharges and used 44 percent of all inpatient days of care.
The NHDS, which has been conducted continuously since 1965, provides the country’s most current, and only nationally representative, data on hospitalizations and the characteristics of patients discharged from non-Federal, short-stay hospitals. Public use data files and information about the surveys may be found at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/major/hdasd/nhds.htm Users are encouraged to subscribe to the NHDS listserv, which provides information about data from the NHDS and its companion survey, the National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery (NSAS).
The NHDS and NSAS are two in a family of provider and establishment-based surveys known collectively as the National Health Care Survey. These surveys collect data from health care providers about practice and organizational characteristics, patient characteristics, and details about patients’ clinical management. Other component surveys include the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS and NHAMCS, respectively, which cover care delivered in physicians’ offices, hospital outpatient and emergency departments), and the National Nursing Home Survey, National Nursing Assistant Survey, and National Home and Hospice Care Survey (NNHS, NNAS and NHHCS, respectively, which cover long term care): http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhcs.htm.
