National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2004

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 2004 survey, data were collected from 204 OPDs
and 458 EDs. Among the variables included are age, race, and sex of
the patient, reason for the visit, physician's diagnoses, cause of
injury, surgical procedures (OPDs only), medication therapy, and
expected source of payment. For 2004, 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.