Agency News and Notes

Procedures in U.S. Hospitals, 1997

A new resource on hospital care

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has just published the second in a series of Fact Books from AHRQ's powerful Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP).

Procedures in U.S. Hospitals, 1997, provides a readable and comprehensive look at diagnostic and therapeutic procedures performed during a patient's hospital stay—which procedures are most common, who receives them, who is billed for them, and which are performed in "high-volume" hospitals. The facts and charts in this Fact Book reveal that:

• One in four hospital stays includes cardiovascular procedures.
• Over a third of patients undergo two or more procedures during their hospital stay.
• Appendectomy is the most common procedure for children ages 1 to 17.
• Women are more likely than men to receive a colonoscopy.
• Hospital charges for stays involving heart, liver, or other organ transplantation are among the most costly.
• Medicare is billed for about three-fourths of all hospital stays that involve a cardiac pacemaker or defibrillator procedure.
• Seven of the top 10 procedures billed to Medicaid are related to pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn infant care.
• One in six hospital stays for alcohol and drug rehabilitation or detoxification is uninsured.
• Three in 10 stays involving heart surgery on children are in low-volume hospitals.

Print copies of Procedures in U.S. Hospitals, 1997 (AHRQ Publication No. 01-0016) are available without charge from the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse.

Note: Procedures in U. S. Hospitals, 1997, is based on data from HCUP's Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a database of over 7 million records that approximates a 20-percent sample of U.S. community hospitals. The sample itself is drawn from HCUP's State Inpatient Databases, which cover inpatient care in community hospitals in 22 States, or about 60 percent of all hospital discharges for 1997.

Return to Contents
Proceed to Next Article