The National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) is designed to provide accurate and reliable health care statistics that answer key questions of interest to health care and public health professionals, researchers and health care policy makers. This includes tracking the latest trends affecting hospitals and health care organizations and factors that influence the use of health care resources, the quality of health care and disparities in health care services provided to population subgroups in the United States.

This new survey integrates inpatient data formerly collected by the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) with the emergency department (ED), outpatient department (OPD), hospital-based ambulatory surgery location (ASL), and freestanding ambulatory surgery center (ASC) data collected by the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). The integration of these two surveys allows examination of care provided across treatment settings. It will also be possible to link the survey data to the National Death Index and the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) and Medicaid Statistical Information System (MSIS) datasets to obtain a more complete picture of patient care.

Selected Participants

Has your hospital been selected to take part in the National Hospital Care Survey?

NHCS Secure Transfer System

Participating hospitals, are you ready to upload your UB-04/837 data? This link will take you straight to our Secure Data Transfer System maintained by Westat, an agent of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).