California Hospital Inpatient Characteristics by Facility

State of California's Department of Health Care Access and Information provides annual summaries of hospital inpatient activity. The dataset includes discharges, length of stay, age groups, race, sex, expected payer, diagnosis groups, and procedure groups. Data can be aggregated statewide or by hospital county, bed size, and control type.

Use Cases

• Analyze average length of stay variations across different principal diagnosis groups and expected payer categories.
• Model discharge disposition patterns using features like admission source, admission type, and age group.
• Compare statewide discharge volumes and principal procedure group frequencies by hospital bed size grouping and type of control.

Strengths

• Annual updates provide a consistent time series for trend analysis, with the latest update in November 2025.
• Includes multiple analytical dimensions such as age group, race, sex, expected payer, and type of care for stratified analysis.
• Data supports aggregation at state, county, and facility levels, enabling geographic and institutional comparisons.

Limitations

• Data is provided as pre-summarized Excel pivot tables, limiting access to raw, patient-level records for detailed modeling.
• Specific row counts and column definitions are not provided, making it difficult to assess the dataset's granularity and scope prior to download.

Provenance

Source

State of California, Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI).

Collection Method

Annual compilation and summarization of hospital inpatient discharge data into Excel pivot tables.

Time Range

Annual data; specific years not stated.

Freshness

Annual updates; last updated November 2025.

Geography

State of California, with breakdowns possible by hospital county.