Hospital Admissions Data from the Health Care Finanacing Administration (HCFA)

Hospital admissions data for residents of all 50 states are available for males and females over age 65 from the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), but only on reel tapes. The cost is $1500 per year. Because these are Medicare data, data sets contain patient information. Data are not available on-line, and the user must enter into an agreement with HCFA that states that data will only be used for research purposes. Another limitation of this data source is that hospital admissions data are only available from 1991 to the present. At the conclusion of the research study, the data must be returned.