New Data for Researchers

NCHS releases health insurance coverage data

Last month, NCHS published Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, January-March 2007.  The report presents three key measures of health insurance coverage: persons who currently lack coverage; persons uninsured at any point in time in the previous year; and, persons who have experienced lack of coverage for more than one year. In the first quarter of 2007, 14.2 percent of individuals were uninsured at the time of the interview, 17.8 percent had been uninsured for some part of the previous year, and 10.3 percent had been uninsured for more than a year.

NCHS publishes each of these estimates quarterly, within six months of the close of each quarter. Complete calendar-year data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) are released during the summer following the end of each data collection year. Currently, users can access calendar year 2006 questionnaires, data and related documentation on the web. The health insurance segment provides a full range of data items addressing health insurance, including type of health care coverage and managed care arrangements, that can be analyzed in relation to health behaviors, health care access and utilization, poverty status, and a variety of demographic variables.

AHRQ releases 2005 versions of the HCUP inpatient and outpatient hospital databases

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sponsors the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP).  HCUP is a group of health care databases and related software tools and products that is sponsored by a federal-state-industry partnership.  HCUP is a rich resource for researchers and policy-makers who are interested in identifying, tracking, and analyzing national, regional, and state-level trends in health care utilization, access, charges, quality, and outcomes. The HCUP databases contain a core set of clinical and non-clinical information on all patients, regardless of payer—including Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and the uninsured. In addition to the core set of uniform data elements common to all databases, some databases also include other valuable elements, such as the patient's race.  Researchers may also conduct multi-year trends analyses using HCUP data.

HCUP produces five types of databases:  The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID), State Inpatient Databases (SID), State Ambulatory Surgery Databases (SASD), and State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD):

Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS): The NIS is the largest all-payer inpatient care database in the United States, containing data from approximately 8 million hospital stays each year. The NIS databases are available for data years 1988 to 2005. 

Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID): The KID is a database of hospital inpatient stays for children and allows researchers to study a broad range of conditions and procedures related to child health issues. The KID includes a sample of pediatric discharges from 2,500 to 3,500 U.S. community hospitals. Currently, the following data years are available for the KID: 1997, 2000, and 2003. 

State Inpatient Databases (SID): The SID contain the universe of the inpatient discharge abstracts in participating states, translated into a uniform format to facilitate multi-state comparisons and analyses. Together, the SID encompass about 90 percent of all U.S. community hospital discharges. The SID databases are available for data years 1990 to 2005.

State Ambulatory Surgery Databases (SASD) : The SASD capture surgeries performed on the same day that patients are admitted and released.  All of the databases include abstracts from hospital-affiliated ambulatory surgery sites and some contain the universe of ambulatory surgery encounter abstracts for that state, including records from both hospital-affiliated and freestanding surgery centers. The SASD databases are available for data years 1997 to 2005.

State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD): The SEDD capture information on all hospital-affiliated emergency department visits that do not result in an admission. The SEDD contain the emergency department encounter abstracts in participating states, translated into a uniform format to facilitate multi-state comparisons and analyses. The SEDD databases are available for data years 1999 to 2005.

HCUP databases are available from the HCUP Central Distributor. For additional information about the HCUP databases and related products, please visit the HCUP User Support Website at: http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/.

New Online Statistical Report on Hospital-Based Care — HCUP Facts and Figures

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released a new statistical report entitled HCUP Facts and Figures: Statistics on Hospital-Based Care in the United States, 2005. Using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) databases, this report presents information about hospital care in 2005, as well as trends in care from 1993 to 2005.  HCUP Facts and Figures features an overview of hospital-related topics, including general characteristics of U.S. hospitals and the patients being treated, information about the most common diagnoses, conditions, and procedures associated with inpatient stays, data focusing on the costs and charges associated with hospitalizations, and a discussion of uninsured hospitalizations.

Selected highlights of hospital-based care in 2005 include:

• From 1997 to 2005, the number of community hospitals declined from 5,060 hospitals to 4,936 hospitals. Despite this decline, the volume of hospital stays grew by 4.5 million. Hospitals were able to accommodate this increase in discharges primarily because of a four percent reduction in the average length of stay.
• The average cost per hospital inpatient stay in 2005 was $7,900, up an average of 5.7 percent annually since 1997.
• Among the most frequent reasons for hospitalizations were childbirth and newborns, which together accounted for nearly 1 out of 4 (23 percent) of all hospitalizations in 2005.
• Blood transfusions were the most common procedure performed during a hospitalization in 2005, occurring in six percent of all discharges.
• Six of the 20 most costly conditions associated with hospitalization were related to the heart. These 6 conditions (coronary artery disease, heart attack, congestive heart failure, irregular heart beat, stroke, and non-specific chest pain) together accounted for 17 percent of all community hospital costs in 2005.
• Diabetes-related hospitalizations occurred at a higher rate in lower-income communities.

Some notable trends in hospital-based care include:

• The total number of inpatient bariatric surgeries increased 15-fold from 1995 to 2004, but stabilized in 2005.
• The number of hospital stays for septicemia (sepsis) rose 30 percent from 1997 to 2005.
• The number of cesarean-sections grew 67 percent between 1996 and 2005.

To access HCUP-related publications, please visit the Reports section of the HCUP User Support Website.

 
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