1995 data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, which was inaugurated in 1992 to fill a gap in U.S. ambulatory care data. It provides national estimates from samples of patient records selected from 391 emergency departments and 230 outpatient departments. The survey was conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics.
Use Cases
- Analyze patient demographics and visit patterns based on age, race, and sex variables.
- Study reasons for visits and physician diagnoses to understand common outpatient and emergency care needs.
- Investigate medication therapy and expected payment sources for hospital ambulatory services.
- Examine cause of injury data specific to emergency department visits.
- Analyze surgical procedure data specific to outpatient department visits.
Strengths
- National-scale estimates derived from a sample of 391 emergency departments and 230 outpatient departments.
- Includes specific variables like cause of injury (ED) and surgical procedures (OPD) not found in other surveys.
- Designed to fill a known data gap for hospital-based ambulatory care in the United States.
Limitations
- Row count and total number of patient records are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
- Source
- United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics
- Collection Method
- Data collected from samples of patient records selected from a national sample of hospital emergency and outpatient departments.
- Time Range
- 1995
- Geography
- United States