Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

A major part of The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) contains data on hospital inpatient stays. The largest all-payer inpatient care database in the US, the NIS obtains data on approximately 8 million hospital stays each year, as reported in the discharge records of 1,045 hospitals in 38 States, approximating a 20-percent stratified sample of U.S. community hospitals. It is the only national hospital database with charge information on all patients, regardless of payer, including persons covered by Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and the uninsured. Researchers and policymakers use the NIS to identify, track, and analyze national trends in health care utilization, access, charges, quality, and outcomes. The large sample size of the NIS also enables analysis of rare conditions, such as congenital anomalies; uncommon treatments, such as organ transplantation; and special patient populations, such as the uninsured.

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