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NIS Description of Data Elements

 
ST_OWNER - Ownership/control category
 
Documentation Sections:
General Notes
Uniform Values
State Specific Notes
General Notes
 

The HCUP data element for the hospital's ownership/control category has changed over time. In the 1988-1992 NIS, the hospital's ownership/control category was stored in the variable ST_OWNER. In the 1993-1997 NIS, this same information is stored in the variable H_CONTRL. Beginning with the 1998 NIS, the name HOSP_CONTROL is used.

Although the categories for hospital control do not change across years, the labels used to describe hospitals do change:

  • Government, nonfederal is equivalent to public
  • Private not-for-profit is equivalent to voluntary
  • Private investor-owned/private for profit is equivalent to proprietary.

Hospitals in different ownership/control categories tend to have different missions and different responses to government regulations and policies.

The hospital's ownership/control category was obtained from the AHA Annual Survey of Hospitals.

Hospital ownership (ST_OWNER) is missing for some zero-weight hospitals for which the information was not available (see the File Composition for the Nationwide Inpatient Sample for a definition of zero-weight hospitals). Zero-weight hospitals are included in the 1988-1992 data for NIS, Release 1. Because relatively few hospitals were affected and the complexity of including these hospitals entailed considerable processing burden and costs, no zero-weight hospitals are included in the NIS after 1992.

 
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Uniform Values
VariableDescriptionValueValue Description
ST_OWNEROwnership/control category1Public
2Private nonprofit
3Private for profit
.Missing
 
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State Specific Notes
None
 
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Internet Citation: HCUP NIS Description of Data Elements. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). September 2008. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/db/vars/st_owner/nisnote.jsp.
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Last modified 9/17/08