2017 Data Now Available for AHRQ’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project

To support researchers and policymakers who seek accurate and timely healthcare data on hospital inpatient stays, emergency department visits and ambulatory surgery utilization, AHRQ has released four 2017 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) databases:

The National Inpatient Sample (NIS) is the largest publicly available inpatient healthcare database in the United States, covering all patients regardless of expected payer for the hospital stay.
The Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) is the largest publicly available all-payer emergency department (ED) database in the nation. It enables the study of a broad range of conditions and procedures among patients treated in the ED and released, or admitted to the same hospital.
The Nationwide Readmissions Database (NRD) generates national estimates of hospital readmissions and contains discharge data for patients with and without repeat hospital visits and those who have died in the hospital. This database provides information on hospital readmissions for all patients, regardless of expected payer.
The Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample (NASS) tracks information about major ambulatory surgery encounters in more than 2,700 hospital-owned facilities across the United States. It provides information on patient characteristics, clinical diagnostic and surgical procedure codes, disposition of patients, total charges and expected source of payment, and facility characteristics.

The HCUP family of healthcare databases and related software tools and products is made possible by a federal-state-industry partnership sponsored by AHRQ. The databases are available for purchase via the HCUP Central Distributor.