Public Use Data File Updates

2004 NHAMCS Emergency Department File
8/4/06 - A slightly revised version of the 2004 NHAMCS Emergency Department file was uploaded to the ftp server. This file incorporates modifications to the edit process for the internal variables used to calculate WAITTIME (waiting time to see a physician) and LOV (length of visit). The revised WAITTIME and LOV are only minimally different than the first release, but have been made available in the interest of consistency with NCHS reports, the revised edit procedures, and future years of data which use those procedures.

2003 NAMCS File - Stata documentation
10/18/05 - A new namcs03.dct file was added to the Stata documentation for the 2003 NAMCS public use file on 10/18/2005. The new file corrects some problems that were found with the Stata definitions for AGEDAYS, PATCODE, and TIMEMD. If you have used these variables with an earlier version of the .dct file, please note that item values greater than 100 may have been dropped in your output. We apologize for the inconvenience.

2002 NHAMCS Emergency Department File
12/10/04 - We made revisions to two data items on the NHAMCS-Emergency Department public use file for 2002. These are ADRG2CL1 (1st NDC class for 2nd drug causing an adverse drug event) and DRG3ING5 (5th ingredient for 3rd medication provided or prescribed). Revisions were also made to one item on the NHAMCS-Outpatient Department file, EXAMWI2 (2nd write-in examination).

2002 NAMCS File (affects some SUDAAN users only)
9/29/04 - The 2002 NAMCS public use file was modified slightly to resolve a problem found when running SUDAAN version 8.0.2 and higher. This problem only appears when using the WOR (without replacement) design option with multi-level design variables and may cause the program to abort. For those using the SUDAAN WR (with replacement) option or other analytic software packages using an ultimate cluster model for variance estimation (for example, SAS, Stata, and SPSS), there should be no problem using the original version of the 2002 NAMCS public use file, so you do not need to replace your file with this new release.