Ambulatory and
Inpatient Procedures in the United States, 1996
Medical
technology and health care delivery have changed dramatically during the past 15 years.
One of these changes has been the 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, 1996,"
presents estimates of surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed in the United States.
Data are presented by characteristics of patients, region of the country, and procedure
categories for ambulatory and inpatient procedures separately and combined. This report
combines data collected from the 1996 National Hospital Discharge Survey and the 1996
National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery.
Data
Highlights: In
1996 an estimated 71.9 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed on 39.9
million ambulatory and inpatient discharges combined. The number of ambulatory (20.6
million) and inpatient (19.3 million) discharges did not differ significantly, but
hospital inpatients had 28 percent more procedures - 40.4 million compared with 31.5
million for ambulatory patients. Females had
more discharges and procedures than males did. For ambulatory patients and hospital
inpatients combined, 59 percent of discharges (23.6 million) and 58 percent of procedures
(42.0 million) were for females. The leading surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed on ambulatory
patients and inpatients combined were endoscopy of small intestine, arteriography and
angiocardiography, extraction of lens, and endoscopy of large intestine. These four
procedures were performed more than 2 million times in 1996.
Keywords:
Surgery, ICD-9-CM, National Hospital Discharge Survey, National Survey of
Ambulatory Surgery