The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released the 2015 Nationwide Readmissions Database (NRD), an annual database designed to generate national estimates of readmissions for all payers and the uninsured. The NRD includes discharges for patients with and without repeat hospital visits and those who have died in the hospital. This database addresses a large gap in health care data—the lack of nationally representative information on hospital readmissions for all ages.

The NRD uses the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) State Inpatient Databases (SID) with verified patient linkage numbers and includes discharges from community hospitals, excluding rehabilitation and long-term acute care hospitals. Following the transition to ICD-10-CM/PCS on October 1, 2015, the file structure of the 2015 NRD has changed. The files are now split into two parts to accommodate the mix of ICD-9-CM (Quarters 1-3) and ICD-10-CM/PCS (Quarter 4) data. The ICD-10-CM/PCS Resources Page offers guidance to users analyzing the 2015 NRD.