National Hospital Discharge Survey

Collected By: CDC

• The National Hospital Discharge Survey is a national probability survey of inpatients discharged from non-Federal short-stay hospitals in the United States.  The NHDS collects data from a sample of approximately 270,000 inpatient records acquired from a national sample of about 500 hospitals. 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 Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, as well as hospital units of institutions (such as prison hospitals), and hospitals with fewer than six beds staffed for patient use, are excluded.
• Two collections are used: one is a manual system in which sample selection and medical transcription from the hospital records to abstract forms is performed by the hospital’s staff or by staff of the U.S. Bureau of the Census on behalf of NCHS.  The other data collection procedure is an automated system in which NCHS purchases machine-readable medical record data from commercial organizations, State data systems, hospitals, or hospital associations.

Key Variables: Items include age, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, and expected sources of payment. Administrative items such as admission and discharge dates (which allow calculation of length of stay), as well as discharge status are also included. Medical information about patients includes diagnoses and procedures coded to ICD-9.

Documentation: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/major/hdasd/nhdsdes.htm

Indicative Studies/ Presentations:

• Cooper, H. L. F., Brady, J. E., Ciccarone, D., Tempalski, B., Gostnell, K. & Friedman, S. R. (2007). Nationwide Increase in the Number of Hospitalizations for Illicit Injection Drug Use–Related Infective Endocarditis. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 45(9), 1200-1203.
• Foreman, M. G., Mannino, D. M., & Moss, M. (2003). Cirrhosis as a Risk Factor for Sepsis and Death: Analysis of the National Hospital Discharge Survey. Chest, 124, 1016-1020.