Monthly Hospital Inpatient and Emergency Department Utilization Trends

Monthly hospital utilization data derived from the HCUP State Inpatient Databases and State Emergency Department Databases. The tables detail trends in inpatient stays and emergency department visits, segmented by encounter type, service line, and priority conditions like COVID-19 and influenza.

Use Cases

• Analyze monthly trends in non-elective inpatient stays admitted through the ED versus those not admitted through the ED.
• Compare emergency department treat-and-release visit volumes for priority conditions such as COVID-19 and influenza.
• Track service line utilization over time for categories like maternal and neonatal conditions or mental health and substance use disorders.
• Model the relationship between inpatient encounter types, such as normal newborns and deliveries, and overall hospital utilization.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from the authoritative HCUP databases, which are a major collection of U.S. hospital care data.
• Includes detailed breakdowns by clinical service line and priority conditions.
• Updated monthly, with the last recorded update in July 2025.

Limitations

• Emergency department data coverage is incomplete as not all HCUP Partners participate in the State Emergency Department Databases.
• The dataset is provided as downloadable Excel tables within HTML pages, which may require extraction and formatting for programmatic analysis.
• Specific row counts, column definitions, and granular patient-level data are not provided in the summary description.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Collection Method

Derived from the HCUP State Inpatient Databases (SID) and HCUP State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD).

Time Range

Monthly trends (specific date range not provided).

Freshness

Updated monthly; last updated 2025-07-25.

Geography

United States (state-level data from participating HCUP Partners).