The National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), which was conducted annually from 1965-2010, was a national probability survey designed to meet the need for information on characteristics of inpatients discharged from non-Federal short-stay hospitals in the United States. Data from the NHDS are available annually and are used to examine important topics of interest in public health and for a variety of activities by governmental, scientific, academic, and commercial institutions.

The National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) is a new survey that integrates inpatient data formerly collected by the NHDS with the emergency department (ED), outpatient department (OPD), and ambulatory surgery center (ASC) data collected by the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS).  The integration of these two surveys along with the collection of personal identifiers (protected health information) will allow the linking of care provided to the same patient in the ED, OPD, ASC, and inpatient departments.  It will also be possible to link the survey data to the National Death Index and Medicaid and Medicare data to obtain a more complete picture of patient care.