The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released the 2006 Kid’s Inpatient Database (KID) in June.  Published every three years, KID is the only dataset in the United States designed specifically to study hospital use, outcomes and charges in the pediatric population.  KID includes all patients under 21 regardless of payer, and includes data from 3,739 hospitals in 38 states.  KID can be weighted to produce national estimates, allowing researchers and policy-makers to identify, track and analyze national trends in pediatric health. 

HCUP is a family of databases and related products developed by AHRQ through a federal-state-industry partnership, with a wide variety of recent titles including:

·         HCUP Facts and Figures:  Statistics on Hospital-Based Care in the United States, 2006:  This report presents data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database on hospital care in 2006, as well as trends in care from 1993 to 2006.  The NIS database itself is also available.

·         Hospital Stays Related to Mental Health, 2006 (HCUP Statistical Brief #62):  About 1.4 million hospitalizations in 2006 involved patients who were admitted for a mental illness, and another 7.1 million had a mental disorder in addition to the physical condition for which they were admitted.  Like all HCUP reports, data are drawn from hospitals that comprise 90 percent of all discharges in the Unietd States and include all patients, regardless of payer, including the uninsured.

·         Hospital Stays for Lung Cancer, 2006 (HCUP Statistical Brief #63):  Hospital admissions for lung cancer remained relatively stable between 1995 and 2006, even though lung cancer rates were dropping. 

·         Hospitalizations Related to Pressure Ulcers Among Adults 18 Years and Older, 2006:  Pressure ulcers, developed either before or after admission, increased by nearly 80% between 1993 and 2006.

HCUP produces powerful, comprehensive health care data that can be used to study a wide variety of health care interests in utilization, access, charges, quality, and outcomes.  Additional information about HCUP databases and reports is available on the User Support Web site at http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov.