1996 summary: National Hospital Discharge Survey.

Abstract

In 1996, there were an estimated 30.5 million discharges of inpatients, excluding newborn infants, from non-Federal, short-stay hospitals in the United States. The discharge rate was 116 per 1,000 population and the average length of stay was 5.2 days. Five diagnostic categories accounted for more than a million discharges. These were heart disease, delivery, malignant neoplasms, pneumonia, and psychoses. There were 40.4 million procedures performed on hospital inpatients during the same year. About three-fourths of all procedures were in four ICD-9-CM chapters: miscellaneous diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, obstetrical procedures, operations on the cardiovascular system, and operations on the digestive system.