National Hospital Care Survey Demonstration Projects: Characteristics of Inpatient and Emergency Department Encounters Among Patients With Any Listed Diagnosis of Alzheimer Disease.

: Objective-This report demonstrates the use of National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) data using Alzheimer disease (AD) as an outcome. Inpatient discharges and emergency room encounters among patients with AD are described to demonstrate the use of NHCS. The capability of NHCS to link across hospital settings and to the National Death Index (NDI) is highlighted. The data are unweighted and are not nationally representative. Methods-This study analyzed inpatient (IP) and emergency department (ED) data from the 83 nonchildren's hospitals in the 2014 NHCS, out of a sample of 581 hospitals that provided Uniform Bill (UB)-04 administrative claims data for both the IP and ED settings. Encounters with any listed diagnosis of AD were identified using an International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification diagnosis code. Individual patients who had any encounter during calendar year 2014 were linked across different hospital-based settings during the same year and with NDI to identify deaths in 2014 or 2015. Results-Analyses are presented on IP and ED encounters with any listed diagnosis of AD to highlight the analytical capabilities of NHCS not available in previous surveys. New data elements not available in the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHCS' predecessor survey) are analyzed, including intensive care use, and diagnostic and therapeutic services received. Linkage across hospital settings (IP and ED) allows for differentiation of patients who were admitted directly as inpatients from those who were admitted as inpatients from the ED, and allows for identification of patients with only an ED encounter. Linkage to NDI allows for analyses of the underlying cause of death for those deaths occurring in 2014 and 2015. Although these data are not nationally representative, NHCS provides unique analytical opportunities to examine health care utilization among patients with AD across settings.