National Hospital Discharge Survey Series
Summary
In 1964, the National Center for Health Statistics initiated a continuous sample of hospital discharge records, collecting medical and demographic information for calculating statistics on hospital utilization, and on the nature and treatment of illness among the hospitalized population. In the surveys, which are made available in annual public use files, data are abstracted from medical records for a sample of patients discharged from a sample of nonfederal short-stay hospitals across the nation.
