Record matching between the National Hospital Care Survey and the National Death Index

Linking the National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) with the National Death Index (NDI) provides information on the outcomes of hospitalizations and allows for analysis of individual and provider characteristics associated with in-hospital and post-discharge mortality. We test the viability of confirming hospital mortality through the linkage of preliminary 2011 NHCS data for "known dead" inpatient discharges (i.e., patients that died during a hospitalization) with the NDI, assessing the true match rate and the quality of the match. We then expand the analysis to identify patients with a 30-, 60-, and 90-day post-discharge mortality. The true match rate for the "known dead" is 94 percent.