Inpatient utilization of short-stay hospitals by diagnosis United States-1971

This report provides estimates of the diagnostic conditions for which patients were hospitalized in non-Federal short-stay hospitals during 1971. The statistics are based on data collected by the Hospital Discharge Survey (HDS), which is conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Data on short-stay hospital utilization: have been collected continuously by the HDS since the beginning of 1965. The estimates presented in this report are based on data abstracted from a sample of the hospital records of inpatients discharged from a national sample of non-Federal general and special short-stay hospitals. Data for newborn infants are excluded from this study. The sample for 1971 included abstracts of about 200,000 hospital records from 379 hospitals that participated in the survey. See appendix I for a description of the sample design, data collection procedures, and the' estimation process. A detailed report on the design of the HDS has been published.