Update to AHRQ Database Identifies Hospitals Associated With Health Systems

A new data file added to AHRQ’s Compendium of U.S. Health Systems identifies 6,726 hospitals and allows researchers, policymakers and others to assess how the hospitals are organized and owned according to the nation’s 626 health systems. The hospital data are publicly available so users can identify hospitals within health systems and then, linking to additional data sources, explore characteristics of the systems and their hospitals, such as cost and quality of care. The compendium was developed by AHRQ’s Comparative Health System Performance Initiative, which studies how health care delivery systems promote evidence-based practices and patient-centered outcomes research in delivering care. Access the new hospital linkage file and technical documentation.

Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, 2016

This inaugural edition of the Compendium—Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, 2016—is composed of 626 U.S. health systems, defined in this analysis to include at least one hospital and at least one group of physicians providing comprehensive care, and who are connected with each other and with the hospital through common ownership or joint management.

The Compendium database includes:

Columns A-D: System identification number (a unique number assigned by AHRQ), name, home office city, and State.
Columns E-I: Indicators of which data source identified the health system and health system identification numbers in the originating data source.
Columns J-R: Total counts of system hospitals, physician groups, physicians, primary care physicians, extent to which systems own or manage hospitals in multiple States, total acute care beds, discharges, and residents.
Columns S-AA: Variables identifying the extent to which systems include investor-owned hospitals, serve children, include teaching hospitals, and serve a disproportionately high share of low-income and uninsured individuals.

If you would like to report a possible data discrepancy, please email CHSP@ahrq.hhs.gov.

Data highlights derived from the Compendium:

Snapshot of U.S. Health Systems, 2016 (PDF, 256 KB)
U.S. Health System Characteristics, 2016 (PDF, 904 KB)
Variation in Health System Characteristics Across States, 2016 (PDF, 1.14 MB)

More information about the definition of health systems and the methodology used in developing the Compendium:

DOWNLOAD THE COMPENDIUM

Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, 2016 (CSV, 78 KB)
Compendium with searchable and sortable fields (XLS, 107 KB)

Your computer should automatically prompt you to open the file in a spreadsheet application to view the data.

Hospital Linkage File—The hospital linkage file is available as an Excel (1.72 MB) or CSV file (820 KB). We recommend that Excel users download only the Excel version of the file. If Excel is used to open the CSV file, the program will automatically drop the zeros in fields with leading zeros.

DATA HIGHLIGHTS

Snapshot of U.S. Health Systems, 2016(PDF, 256 KB)

U.S. Health System Characteristics, 2016 (PDF, 904 KB)

Variation in Health System Characteristics Across States, 2016(PDF, 1.14 MB)

Page last reviewed October 2018
Page originally created August 2017

Internet Citation: Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, 2016. Content last reviewed October 2018. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/chsp/compendium/index.html