Hospital Drug Use Indicators from Preliminary NHCS Data

Preliminary data from 48 inpatient and 40 emergency department hospitals covers patient care from November 2023 to October 2025. The National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) collects this data to inform on national health threats like the opioid emergency. Data includes indicators on drug use, comorbidities, and overdoses from various hospital types.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in specific drug overdose INDICATORs like 'opioid overdose' over TIME across different SETTINGs.
• Compare VALUEs for drug use MEASUREs between different patient SUBGROUPs or GROUP categories.
• Model the relationship between patient comorbidities (via INDICATOR) and hospitalization outcomes using features like SETTING and TIME.

Strengths

• Data sourced from 88 distinct hospitals (48 inpatient, 40 ED).
• Covers a two-year time range from November 2023 to October 2025.
• Includes 10 structured columns for granular analysis of drug use indicators.

Limitations

• Data is explicitly described as preliminary and not nationally representative.
• Sample size (row count) is unknown, limiting statistical reliability assessments.
• Limited to data from only two care settings (inpatient and emergency departments).

Provenance

Source

data.cdc.gov via the National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS).

Collection Method

Collected from Uniform Bill (UB)-04 administrative claims submitted by hospitals.

Time Range

November 1, 2023 to October 31, 2025.

Freshness

Last updated March 2026, covering data through October 2025.

Geography

United States, but not nationally representative.