National Health Care Surveys

Collected By: CDC

Sample Coverage and Dataset Characteristics: The surveys are nationally representative, provider-based, and cover a broad spectrum of health care settings.  Within each setting, data are collected from a sample of organizations that provide care (such as home health care agencies, inpatient hospital units, or physician offices) and from samples of patient (or discharge) encounters within the sampled organizations.

Key Variables:

• The National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) data on the provision and use of ambulatory medical care services in the United States using a sample of visits to non-federally employed office-based physicians who are primarily engaged in direct patient care.  Physicians in the specialties of anesthesiology, pathology, and radiology are excluded from the survey.
• The National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) collects data on the utilization and provision of ambulatory care services in hospital emergency and outpatient departments using a national sample of visits to the emergency departments and outpatient departments of non-institutional general and short-stay hospitals, exclusive of federal, military, and VA hospitals, in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
• The National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) collects data on inpatients discharged from nonfederal short-stay hospitals in the US.  Only hospitals with an average length of stay of fewer than 30 days for all patients, general hospitals, or children's general hospitals are included in the survey.  Federal, military, and VA hospitals, and prison hospitals), and hospitals with fewer than 6 beds staffed for patient use, are excluded. In 2005, approximately 375,000 inpatient records were obtained from 444 hospitals.
• The National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery (NSAS) surveys ambulatory surgery visits collecting data from hospital-based and freestanding ambulatory surgery facilities.  The 2006 survey has detailed data on facility characteristics.
• The National Home and Hospice Care Survey (NHHCS) is a continuing series of surveys of home and hospice care agencies in the United States. The NHHCS is based on a probability sample of home health agencies and hospices.  The survey includes all agencies that are licensed or certified (by Medicare or Medicaid).
• The National Nursing Home Survey (NNHS) is a continuing series of national sample surveys of nursing homes, their residents, and their staff.  All nursing homes included in this survey had at least three beds and were either certified (by Medicare or Medicaid) or had a state license to operate as a nursing home.

Documentation: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhcs.htm

Indicative Studies/Presentations: Guevara, J., Lozano, P., Wickizer, T., Mell, L., & Gephart, H. (2002). Psychotropic Medication Use in a Population of Children Who Have Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder. Pediatrics, 109, 733-739.