National Hospital Discharge Survey, 2003 (ICPSR 4220)

Principal Investigator(s): United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics

Summary: The National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) collects medical and demographic information annually from a sample of hospital discharge records. Variables include patients' demographic characteristics (sex, age, race, marital status), dates of admission and discharge, source and type of admission, status at discharge, final diagnoses, surgical and nonsurgical procedures, dates of surgeries, and sources of payment. Information on hospital characteristics such as bedsize, ownership, an... (more info)

Series: National Hospital Discharge Survey Series

• This data is freely available.

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics. NATIONAL HOSPITAL DISCHARGE SURVEY, 2003. ICPSR04220-v1. Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics [producer], 2001. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2005-04-01. doi:10.3886/ICPSR04220.v1

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04220.v1

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Summary:   The National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) collects medical and demographic information annually from a sample of hospital discharge records. Variables include patients' demographic characteristics (sex, age, race, marital status), dates of admission and discharge, source and type of admission, status at discharge, final diagnoses, surgical and nonsurgical procedures, dates of surgeries, and sources of payment. Information on hospital characteristics such as bedsize, ownership, and region of the country is also included. The medical information is coded using the INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF DISEASES, 9TH REVISION, CLINICAL MODIFICATION (ICD-9-CM).

Subject Terms:   health care facilities, hospitalization, hospitals, illness, medical care, medical evaluation, medical procedures, medical records, patients

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

• 2003

Date of Collection:  

• 2003

Universe:   Patient discharges from nonfederal short-stay hospitals located in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Data Types:   administrative records data

Data Collection Notes:

Per agreement with NCHS, ICPSR distributes the data file and technical documentation in this collection in their original form as prepared by NCHS.

Sample:   The redesigned (as of 1988) NHDS sample includes with certainty all hospitals with 1,000 or more beds or 40,000 or more discharges annually. The remaining sample of hospitals is based on a stratified three-stage design. The first stage consists of selection of 112 primary sampling units (PSUs) that comprise a probability subsample of PSUs used in the 1985-1994 National Health Interview Surveys. The second stage consists of selection of noncertainty hospitals from the sample PSUs. At the third stage, a sample of discharges was selected by a systematic random sampling technique. For 2003, the sample consisted of 501 hospitals. Of these, 22 were found to be ineligible. Of the 479 eligible hospitals, 426 hospitals responded to the survey.

Weight:   These data contain one weight variable (wgt). Users should refer to the technical documentation for further information regarding the weight and their derivation. Additionally, users may need to weight the data prior to analysis.

Data Source:

hospital records

Extent of Processing:  ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Created online analysis version with question text.

Original ICPSR Release:  2005-04-01

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