National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) Files

The data was used to conduct a wide range of analyses. This series contains information about discharges from a sample of the civilian, noninstitutional short-stay hospitals.

The files include information extracted from the medical care records of inpatient samples designed to obtain calendar-year estimates of discharges by demographic characteristics of patients, lengths of stay, diagnoses, surgical and non-surgical procedures, size of hospital and types of hospital ownership. The data was compiled annually and was released annually or as a multi-year compilation. This data comprises government records extracted from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC).