Ambulatory and Inpatient Procedures in the United States, 1994

Medical technology and health care delivery have changed dramatically during the past 15 years. One of these changes has been a shift in location for many procedures from hospital inpatient settings to ambulatory settings in hospitals and freestanding centers. This report, "Ambulatory and Inpatient Procedures in the United States, 1994," provides general information about ambulatory and inpatient procedures performed in the United States in 1994. Data in this report include numbers and rates of procedures and discharges for ambulatory surgery patients and inpatients by sex, age, and geographic region. This report combines data collected from the 1994 National Hospital Discharge Survey and the 1994 National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery.

Data Highlights:
In 1994 an estimated 68.4 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed on 38.0 million ambulatory and inpatient discharges combined.
Females had higher utilization rates in both ambulatory and inpatient settings. Among inpatients, females had 48 percent higher rates of procedures than males. Obstetrical procedures, which accounted for 27 percent of the inpatient procedures for females, were a major reason for their higher rates. However, females also had a 23 percent higher rate of ambulatory surgery procedures, which included almost no obstetrical procedures.
The leading surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed on ambulatory patients and inpatients combined were endoscopy of large intestines, arteriography and angiocardiography, endoscopy of small intestine, and extraction of lens. These four procedures were each done more than 2 million times in 1994.

Keywords: Surgery, ICD-9-CM, National Hospital Discharge Survey, National Surgery of Ambulatory Surgery

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007