SPARCS: New York State Hospital Inpatient Discharges by Facility, 2009 Onward

Beginning in 2009, this dataset provides a summary of inpatient discharge records from Article 28 hospitals in New York State, collected via the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS). It includes patient characteristics, diagnoses, treatments, and charges, aggregated by facility. The data is published by health.data.ny.gov and was last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing trends in Average Length of Stay and Number of Discharges by Discharge Year and Hospital Name.
• Comparing patient outcomes (Discharged Dead or Alive) across APR Medical Surgical Description and Patient Age Group.
• Profiling hospital service volume using Yearly Rank by Volume and Facility ID.
• Investigating insurance coverage patterns by correlating Type of Insurance with Patient Gender and age groups.

Strengths

• Data covers discharges from 2009 onward, providing a multi-year time series.
• Includes 11 columns detailing clinical, demographic, and operational facets of hospital stays.
• Published by a state health department (health.data.ny.gov) via an established reporting system (SPARCS).

Limitations

• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

health.data.ny.gov

Collection Method

Collected via the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS), a mandatory data reporting system for New York State hospitals.

Time Range

Beginning 2009

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 27 15:30:25; freshness should be verified.

Geography

New York State, United States