This public use file is one in a series of event-level public use files drawn from the 2008 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) Household Component (HC). Released as an ASCII file with SAS, SPSS, and STATA programming statements and in SAS transport format, the Hospital Inpatient Stays File provides detailed information on hospital inpatient stays. Data are gathered from a nationally representative sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States and can be used to make estimates of inpatient hospital stay utilization and expenditures for calendar year 2008. Each record represents one, household-reported, inpatient hospital stay reported during the 2008 portion of round 3 and rounds 4 and 5 for Panel 12, as well as rounds 1, 2 and the 2008 portion of round 3 for Panel 13 of the survey (i.e., the rounds for the MEPS panels covering calendar year 2008). The Hospital Inpatient Stays Public Use Data File is an event-level data file containing characteristics associated with the hospital inpatient stay event such as: the date of the hospital inpatient stay, reason for the stay, types of services received, condition(s) and procedure(s) associated with the hospital inpatient stay, whether or not medicines were prescribed and imputed expenditure data. Update Notes
The documentation for H118D, 2008 Inpatient Stays File, has been updated to reflect that the day the visit started, IPBEGDD, and the day the visit ended, IPENDDD, are no longer removed from the 2007 Inpatient Stays File.
Update #1: 11/12/10
The following files have been updated as of November 12, 2010: HC-118F 2008 Outpatient Visits File
HC-118E 2008 Emergency Room Visits File
HC-118D 2008 Hospital Inpatient Stays File
For each file the day of the event has been added: OPDATEDD; ERDATEDD; IPBEGDD and IPENDDD, respectively.
In addition, a correction has been made to the weights for individuals age 65 and older. Any analyses done that includes this population prior to the weight correction will need to be repeated.
*The PDF version of the codebook is recommended for printing; the HTML version is database driven and lets you navigate quickly to details on each variable.
**Right-click on the data file link, then select Save Target As or Save Link As to download the file.
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