HCUPnet is an online statistical tool created as a part of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), an initiative of the US Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR). HCUPnet allows users to generate customized statistical reports in order to identify, analyze, and track national data on "hospital utilization, access, charges, quality and...

Last month, the NCHS released statistics from its 1997 National Hospital Discharge Survey. The "report presents national estimates of the use of non-Federal, short-stay hospitals in the United States during 1997. Numbers and rates of discharges, diagnoses, and procedures are shown by age and sex." The summary gives average lengths of stays for all discharges, broken down by region, as well as...

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released public-use data files for the 1997 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). The NHAMCS "collect[s] data on the utilization and provision of ambulatory care services in hospital emergency and outpatient departments." The Website for the survey describes methodology and data, provides technical documentation for accessing...