National Hospital Discharge Survey, 1999 (ICPSR 3108)
Version Date: Nov 4, 2005 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03108.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for 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, 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).
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Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Restrictions View help for Restrictions
In preparing the data file for this collection, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has removed direct identifiers and characteristics that might lead to identification of data subjects. As an additional precaution NCHS requires, under Section 308(d) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 242m), that data collected by NCHS not be used for any purpose other than statistical analysis and reporting. NCHS further requires that analysts not use the data to learn the identity of any persons or establishments and that the director of NCHS be notified if any identities are inadvertently discovered. ICPSR member institutions and other users ordering data from ICPSR are expected to adhere to these restrictions.
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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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(1) Per agreement with NCHS, ICPSR distributes the data file and text of the technical documentation in this collection in their original form as prepared by NCHS. (2) The codebook is provided as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.
Sample View help for 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 1999, the sample consisted of 513 hospitals. Of these, 26 were found to be ineligible. Of the 487 eligible hospitals, 458 hospitals responded to the survey.
Universe View help for Universe
Patient discharges from nonfederal short-stay hospitals located in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Data Source View help for Data Source
hospital records
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2001-03-09
Version History View help for Version History
2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
- U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics. NATIONAL HOSPITAL DISCHARGE SURVEY, 1999. ICPSR version. Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics [producer], 1999. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2001. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03108.v1
2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.
2001-03-09 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.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

This study is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA), the aging program within ICPSR. NACDA is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Heath (NIH).