The NIS data dictionary can be found here.
Type of Data
Speciality/General Inpatient Readmission database
Years Available
2010-2019
Note: At OSU, we have 2010-2016 available through the CATALYST Data Core
Short Description
Nationwide Readmission Database (NRD) is powerful database designed to support different types of analyses involving national readmission rates for all payers and the uninsured. This database addresses a big gap in healthcare data – the lack of nationally representative information on hospital readmissions for all ages and all payers. NRD is a part of family of databases and software tools developed for the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). More details about NRD can be found at their fast-facts website.
Strengths
- Unweighted, NRD contains about 18 million discharges annually
- Weighted, it approximates 35 million discharges
- NRD database contains three discharge-level files and one hospital-level file
- There are more than 100 clinical and nonclinical variables for each hospital stay such as age, expected primary payer, discharge status, ICD-9/10 diagnosis and procedure codes and total charges
- The data are well formatted and maintained with data dictionaries, available as comma-separated value (CSV) files with programs of loading these CSV files into SAS, SPSS or Stata
Limitations
- There is no data on patient race or ethnicity
- There is no data element to identify whether consecutive inpatient stays are related or not
- Discharge file called “Diagnosis and Procedure Groups File” is not available for 2016-2017 (this file provides additional information on diagnoses and procedures)