U.S. Hospital Admissions and Outpatient Visits by Ownership and Size

Hospital admission, average length of stay, outpatient visits, and outpatient surgery data for the United States, categorized by hospital ownership type and size. The data originates from the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey of Hospitals and is disseminated via the CDC's NCHS Data Query System. The dataset includes statistical estimates, confidence intervals, and standard errors for analysis.

Use Cases

• Analyzing trends in hospital admissions and outpatient visits over TIME_PERIOD by different OWNERSHIP types using ESTIMATE and ESTIMATE_TYPE.
• Comparing average length of stay (likely in ESTIMATE) across hospitals of different SIZE (implied by GROUP/SUBGROUP) and CLASSIFICATION.
• Assessing statistical reliability of utilization metrics by examining STANDARD_ERROR, ESTIMATE_LCI, and ESTIMATE_UCI columns.
• Filtering and grouping hospital performance data by TOPIC, SUBTOPIC, and TAXONOMY for specific research queries.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from the authoritative American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey of Hospitals.
• Includes statistical quality measures like STANDARD_ERROR and confidence intervals (ESTIMATE_LCI, ESTIMATE_UCI).
• Provides breakdowns by multiple dimensions including OWNERSHIP, SIZE, and TIME_PERIOD.

Limitations

• Row count and total data volume are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and completeness require manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey of Hospitals, Hospital Statistics.

Collection Method

Survey data aggregated and published via the CDC's NCHS Data Query System (DQS).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-02 11:29:38.

Geography

United States