The NIS is the largest publicly available all-payer inpatient care database in the United States. It contains data from approximately 8 million hospital stays each year. The 2012 NIS was redesigned. The new NIS is a sample of discharges from all hospitals participating in HCUP. For prior years, the NIS was a sample of hospitals. The NIS allows for weighted national estimates to identify, track, and analyze national trends in health care utilization, access, charges, quality, and outcomes.
The NIS contains clinical and resource use information included in a typical discharge abstract, with safeguards to protect the privacy of individual patients, physicians, and hospitals (as required by data sources). The NIS excludes data elements that could directly or indirectly identify individuals.
Healthcare Cost & Utilization Project (HCUP)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
United States, participating states
Stratified probability sample of hospitals in the frame, with sampling probabilities proportional to the number of U.S. community hospitals in each stratum. The frame is limited by the availability of inpatient data from the data sources currently participating in HCUP. Target sample size is 20%
Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)
Administrative records
Available on CD-ROM at the Map & Data Library. Note the second release of the 1997 survey includes records that were omitted in the first release.
University of Toronto students, staff and faculty for research purposes only. Each user must sign a copy of the Data Use Agreement and complete the online Data Use Agreement Training Course at www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov.