Agency News and Notes

New HCUP statistical report on hospital-based care is available online

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released a new Web-based 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.

The HCUP Facts and Figures report showcases the wealth of statistics available from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database. It features an overview of numerous 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. Highlights of hospital care in 2005 include the fact that 6 of the 20 most costly conditions associated with hospitalizations were related to the heart and that 6 percent of all hospital discharges involved a blood transfusion.

Examples of trend information presented in the report include findings that 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; and the number of C-sections grew 67 percent between 1996 and 2005.

HCUP Facts and Figures can be found in the Reports section of the HCUP-US Web site at http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports.jsp. A description of the NIS is also available on that site in the Databases section.

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