National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2003

The National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey
(NHAMCS) provides data from samples of patient records selected from
emergency departments (EDs) and outpatient departments (OPDs) of a
national sample of hospitals. The resulting national estimates
describe the use of hospital ambulatory medical care services in the
United States. For the 2003 survey, data were collected from 236 OPDs
and 475 EDs. Among the variables included are age, race, and sex of
the patient, reason for the visit, physician's diagnoses, cause of
injury (EDs only), surgical procedures (OPDs only), medication
therapy, and expected source of payment. For 2003, additional updates
and revisions have been made to the drug characteristics data. The
variables CSTRATM and CPSUM have been added to assist in the
computation of variances.