The National Hospital Discharge Surveys are part of a continuing sample of hospital discharge records used to calculate statistics on hospital utilization. The data collections consist of data abstracted from the face sheets of the medical records for sampled inpatients discharged from a national sample of nonfederal short-stay hospitals. These hospitals must also have six or more beds staffed for patient use. Each yearly survey consists of one Class IV data file in logical record length format.
Some files have machine-readable documentation and a data collection instrument.
NCHS further requires that analysts not use the data to learn the identity of any persons or establishments and that the director of NCHS be notified if any identities are inadvertently discovered. Office of the Secretary. 1984 Revision of the Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set. National Center for Health Statistics. International Classification of Diseases.