The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) National Inpatient Sample (NIS) featuring 2020 data is now available. The NIS is the largest publicly available all-payer 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 around 7 million hospital inpatient records from 48 States and the District of Columbia, covering 98 percent of the U.S. population.

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 inpatient utilization, access, cost, 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 2020 NIS can be purchased through the HCUP Central Distributor. Additional information is located on the NIS Overview Page.