The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project https://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov sponsored by the Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ) www.ahrq.gov within HHS has data on all-payer encounter level hospital care data in the U.S.
The HCUP databases bring together data from state data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations, and the federal government to create a national information resource. This information is used to provide information and can be used to answer questions about healthcare use, access, outcomes, and costs related to hospital inpatient stays, ambulatory surgery and services, emergency department visits, and readmissions.
The database “National Inpatient Sample” (NIS) is the largest publicly available all-payer inpatient database in the U.S. The NIS provides approximately 20 percent of the information on discharges form all U.S community hospitals and contains data from more than seven million hospital stays each year.
Another database devoted to children is called “The “Kids’ Inpatient Database” (KID). Tis database is an all-payer pediatric database provides information on hospital services, outcomes, and charges for children and adolescents. The database contains a sample of two to three million hospital pediatric discharges per year.
For information specifically on EDs, the “Nationwide Emergency Department Sample” (NEDS) has national estimates of ED visits. The database provides about 30 million records each year for patients who were either treated in the ED and released or treated in the ED and then admitted to the same hospital. The “State Emergency Department Databases” (SEDD) contains discharge information on all ED visits that do not result in a hospital admission.
For readmissions, the “Nationwide Readmissions Database” (NRD) has information on repeat hospital visits in one year and addresses the need for national information on hospital readmissions for all ages and payers.
The states also report information and established databases with specific information. The “State Inpatient Databases” (SID) contains hospital inpatient discharge information. The SIDs can be used to investigate issues that are unique to one state or can be used to compare data from two of more states.
The “State Ambulatory Surgery and Services Databases” (SASD) provides encounter-level data for ambulatory surgery and other outpatient services from hospital-owned facilities. Some states will provide data for ambulatory surgery and outpatient services from non-hospital-owned facilities.
For information, go to www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/databases.jsp.