Hospital Inpatient Discharges by Patient County of Residence, 2009 Onward

Hospital inpatient discharges from every hospital in New York State, aggregated by patient county of residence. The Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) provides this data, which is de-identified to preserve confidentiality. Data is available from 2009 onward, with a last update recorded for March 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing regional healthcare demand by aggregating Number of Discharges by Patient County of Residence and Discharge Year.
• Modeling Average Length of Stay based on Patient Age Group and Patient Gender for resource planning.
• Identifying high-volume patient counties by using Yearly Rank by Volume and Patient County of Residence for service allocation.
• Tracking temporal trends in hospital utilization by cross-tabulating Discharge Year with Patient Age Group and Patient Gender.

Strengths

• Data covers discharges from every hospital in New York State, including Article 28 facilities, suggesting broad coverage.
• Includes multiple demographic and temporal dimensions such as Patient Age Group, Patient Gender, and Discharge Year.
• Data is explicitly de-identified and aggregated by county to preserve patient confidentiality.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and completeness require manual inspection after download.
• Facility names are excluded, preventing analysis at the individual hospital level.

Provenance

Source

health.data.ny.gov via the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS).

Collection Method

Administrative hospital discharge records aggregated and de-identified.

Time Range

Beginning 2009.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-27 15:34:41; freshness should be verified.

Geography

New York State, aggregated by Patient County of Residence.