1998 Summary: National Hospital Discharge Survey

Objectives—This report presents national estimates of the use of non-Federal short-stay hospitals in the United States during 1998. Numbers and rates of discharges, diagnoses, and procedures are shown by age and sex. Discharges are also shown by geographic region of hospitals. Average lengths of stay are presented for all discharges and for selected diagnostic categories by age and by sex. Methods—The estimates are based on medical abstract data collected through the National Hospital Discharge Survey for 1998. The survey has been conducted annually by the National Center for Health Statistics since 1965. Diagnoses and procedures presented are coded according to the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification, or ICD–9–CM. Results—In 1998, there were an estimated 31.8 million discharges of inpatients, excluding newborn infants, from short-stay non-Federal hospitals in the United States. The discharge rate was 1,165.3 per 10,000 population and the average length of stay was 5.1 days. Six diagnostic categories each accounted for more than a million discharges. These were heart disease, delivery, malignant neoplasms, pneumonia, psychoses, and cerebrovascular disease. There were 41.5 million procedures performed on hospital inpatients during the same year. Almost threefourths of all procedures were in four ICD–9–CM chapters: miscellaneous diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, obstetrical procedures, operations on the cardiovascular system, and operations on the digestive system.