Hospital Inpatient Discharges (SPARCS): Patient Safety Indicators by Hospital, 2009 Onward

Patient Safety Indicators (PSI) developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) track potential in-hospital complications and adverse events. The dataset contains hospital discharge counts, observed, expected, and risk-adjusted rates with 95% confidence intervals for New York State hospitals beginning in 2009. Data originates from the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) inpatient records and is published by health.data.ny.gov.

Use Cases

• Benchmark hospital performance on specific PSI_Code metrics using PSI_Value, Volume, and Hospital_Name across multiple Years.
• Analyze regional trends in patient safety by aggregating Facility_ID data by Hospital_Region or Hospital_County.
• Model risk-adjusted rates for surgical complications using observed and expected rates provided for each PSI measure.

Strengths

• Data spans from 2009 onward, providing a longitudinal view of patient safety metrics.
• Measures are calculated using AHRQ's established methodology, including risk adjustment and confidence intervals.
• Includes both hospital-level (by Facility_ID) and area-level (by Hospital_County) presentations of PSI measures.

Limitations

• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and completeness require manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

health.data.ny.gov, using New York State's Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) inpatient data.

Collection Method

Hospital discharge counts and PSI rates calculated using AHRQ methodology from SPARCS records and US Census data for denominators.

Time Range

Beginning 2009.

Freshness

Last updated 2025-08-13 13:43:07.

Geography

New York State, United States, presented by hospital and county.