New Data Available on Hospital Inpatient Stays, Use of Medicaid, Emergency Departments

AHRQ’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) has expanded its data resources:

• HCUP Fast Stats, which uses graphs, trend figures or tables to convey complex health care information, now provides information on “National Hospital Utilization and Costs.” The information focuses on national statistics on inpatient stays, including trends, most common diagnoses and most common operations.
• HCUP Fast Stats also offers new quarterly and annual inpatient data on the “Effect of Medicaid Expansion on Hospital Use.” The update includes new data for both 2014 and 2015.
• HCUP has released the 2013 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS). The NEDS is the largest all-payer emergency department (ED) database in the United States and enables analyses of ED utilization patterns to support understanding and decision-making regarding this critical source of health care.