Inpatient stay records include clinical and resource use information typically available from discharge abstracts. Hospital and discharge weights are provided for producing national and State-level estimates. Includes NIS approximates a 20 percent sample of U.S. community hospitals for 1996. It is based on a stratified probabilty sample of hospitals, with sampling probabilities proportional to the number of U.S. community hospitals in each stratum. Access to the NIS is open to all researchers who sign data use agreements.
Uses are limited to research and aggregate statistical reporting.
Because of its size this database supports analyses of rare and common conditions and procedures. The data on the CD set require a statistical software package such as SAS or SPSS to use for analytic purposes.