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HCUP 2017 Nationwide Databases Released

The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) announces release of three nationwide databases, the 2017 Nationwide Readmissions Database (NRD), the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS), and the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample (NASS).

The NRD is designed to generate national estimates of readmissions. The NRD includes discharges for patients with and without repeat hospital visits and those who have died in the hospital. This database addresses a large gap in healthcare data—the lack of nationally representative information on hospital readmissions for all patients, regardless of expected payer.

The NEDS is the largest all-payer emergency department (ED) database in the United States that is publicly available. It was created to enable analyses of ED utilization patterns and to support research, public health professionals, administrators, policymakers, and clinicians in their decision making regarding this critical source of care.

The NASS is constructed from the State Ambulatory Surgery Databases (SASD) and tracks information about major ambulatory surgery encounters in over 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, 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 the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). 

Visit the HCUP User Support website at: www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/databases.jsp