Hospital-Based Ambulatory Surgery, 2007

Excerpt

This Statistical Brief presents data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) State Ambulatory Surgery Databases (SASD) and State Inpatient Databases (SID). These databases provide information on hospital-based ambulatory and inpatient surgeries performed in short-term, acute-care hospitals in the 28 states that provided AS data to HCUP in 2007. These 28 states encompass about two-thirds of the U.S. population. These statistics exclude procedures performed in freestanding AS centers because these centers are not included in many State AS data sources.

This report compares the utilization of ambulatory surgery procedures in hospitals to inpatient procedures in 28 states that provide data sources for both hospital-based ambulatory and inpatient surgery. The analysis is limited to major invasive procedures requiring anesthesia services or sedation, but excludes procedures that are performed infrequently in ambulatory surgery settings, procedures that are adjunct to the principal procedure, dental procedures, obstetrical procedures, and procedures that are done predominantly in outpatient settings outside of hospitals. This report provides information about the distribution of inpatient versus outpatient surgical procedures by body system, as well as the most common surgical procedures performed in an outpatient setting. In addition, ambulatory and inpatient volume, procedure rates, and hospital charge information are compared for each procedure. Unless otherwise noted, estimates are based on all-listed procedures. All differences between estimates provided in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level or better.