Biennial Overview of U.S. Post-acute and Long-term Care Providers

NPALS data tables monitor paid, regulated long-term and post-acute care providers in the United States every two years. The dataset includes geographic, organizational, staffing, service provision, and user characteristics for settings like adult day services centers, home health agencies, hospices, and nursing homes. The National Center for Health Statistics collects this information to support policy, research, and practice.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in staffing levels across different provider types like nursing homes and home health agencies using the 'Select Setting' and 'Value' columns over multiple 'Survey Year' periods.
• Compare service provision metrics, such as activities of daily living support, between 'Geography' regions using the 'Select Measure' and 'Value' fields.
• Assess the statistical reliability of estimates for specific measures, like Medicaid utilization, by examining the 'Low 95% CI', 'High 95% CI', and 'SE' (standard error) columns.
• Model the relationship between organizational characteristics (implied by 'Table' and 'Select Measure') and outcome metrics, accounting for data quality notes in the 'Footnote-Value cell'.

Strengths

• Data collection follows a biennial schedule, providing repeated cross-sectional snapshots for trend analysis.
• Covers six major provider settings: adult day services centers, home health agencies, hospices, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, long-term care hospitals, and nursing homes.
• Includes confidence intervals and standard errors for many estimates, allowing for assessment of statistical precision.

Limitations

• Sample size and total row count are unknown, making it difficult to assess the granularity or statistical power of sub-analyses.
• The dataset is comprised of aggregated statistical tables rather than individual-level or facility-level records, limiting the types of analyses possible.
• Specific data collection methodology and response rates for each survey cycle are not detailed in the provided description.

Provenance

Source

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) National Post-acute and Long-term Care Study (NPALS), hosted on data.cdc.gov.

Collection Method

Survey data collected from post-acute and long-term care providers.

Time Range

Biennial surveys; specific start year not provided.

Freshness

Updated biennially; last metadata update was 2025-12-08.

Geography

United States.