The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) National Inpatient Sample (NIS) featuring 2018 data is now available. The NIS is the largest publicly available inpatient healthcare database in the United States. The NIS is nationally representative of all short-term, non-Federal hospitals in the U.S. It is drawn from the HCUP State Inpatient Databases (SID) and includes more than 7 million hospital inpatient records from 47 States and the District of Columbia, covering more than 97 percent of the U.S. population. The NIS contains information on all hospital stays, regardless of expected payer for the hospital stay.

The large size of the NIS enables analyses of infrequent conditions, uncommon treatments, and special patient populations. The NIS can be used by researchers and policymakers to identify, track, and analyze national trends in healthcare utilization, access, charges, quality, and outcomes.

As part of the HCUP database family, the NIS is considered by health services researchers to be one of the most reliable and affordable databases for studying important healthcare topics. The 2018 NIS can be purchased through the HCUP Central Distributor. Additional information is located on the NIS Overview Page.