National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS)

The National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) is designed to provide accurate and reliable health care statistics that answer key questions of interest to health care and public health professionals, researchers, and health care policy makers.

NHCS integrates inpatient data formerly collected by the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), emergency department (ED) and outpatient department (OPD) data collected by the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS), and substance-involved visit data previously collected by the Drug-Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). The integration of these three surveys allows examination of care provided across treatment settings.

2013-2014 NHCS Data Dictionary