2019 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey Data Files and File Documentation WARNING - DATA USE RESTRICTIONS! Please Read Carefully before Using NCHS Public Use Survey Data The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), conducts statistical and epidemiological activities under the authority granted by the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. § 242k). NCHS survey data are protected by Federal confidentiality laws including Section 308(d) Public Health Service Act [42 U.S.C. 242m(d)] and the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act or CIPSEA [Pub. L. No. 115-435, 132 Stat. 5529 § 302]. These confidentiality laws state the data collected by NCHS may be used only for statistical reporting and analysis. Any effort to determine the identity of individuals and establishments violates the assurances of confidentiality provided by federal law. Terms and Conditions NCHS does all it can to assure that the identity of individuals and establishments cannot be disclosed. All direct identifiers, as well as any characteristics that might lead to identification, are omitted from the dataset. Any intentional identification or disclosure of an individual or establishment violates the assurances of confidentiality given to the providers of the information. Therefore, users will: 1. Use the data in this dataset for statistical reporting and analysis only. 2. Make no attempt to learn the identity of any person or establishment included in these data. 3. Not link this dataset with individually identifiable data from other NCHS or non-NCHS datasets. 4. Not engage in any efforts to assess disclosure methodologies applied to protect individuals and establishments or any research on methods of re-identification of individuals and establishments. By using these data, you signify your agreement to comply with the above-stated statutorily based requirements. Sanctions for Violating NCHS Data Use Agreement Willfully disclosing any information that could identify a person or establishment in any manner to a person or agency not entitled to receive it, shall be guilty of a class E felony and imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or fined not more than $250,000, or both. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Emergency Department (ED) component of the 2019 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey is included in this data release. For ease of transmission, the data file has been converted into a zipped (compressed) format which must be uncompressed prior to use. To uncompress, you can do the following: 1) Create a new folder on your local workstation, for example, C:\MYFILES\ED2019 2) Download to the new folder the file ED2019.zip from the FTP server: https://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/Datasets/NHAMCS/ 3) Right-click on the name of the compressed file from your directory screen. On the pop-up menu, there should be an option to extract the file to a location of your choosing. In the past, the NHAMCS documentation was produced in multiple files which were then compressed into a single self-extracting file in ASCII format. Beginning with 1999, the documentation file has been produced as a single file in PDF format which can be viewed or downloaded from the above address. This file is not compressed. Size (bytes) File Name File Description Compressed Uncompressed ED2019.zip NHAMCS Emergency Department file 2.0 MB 45.3 MB doc19-ed-508.pdf NHAMCS ED documentation file 1.5 MB CAUTION - Because the NHAMCS is a sample survey, the application of weights to the sample data is REQUIRED to produce national estimates of outpatient and emergency department visits, as well as to accurately assess the sampling error of statistics based on the survey data. Please refer to the documentation for instructions on how to apply the weights and to obtain relative standard errors of national estimates. For questions, suggestions, or comments concerning NHAMCS data, please contact the Ambulatory and Hospital Care Statistics Branch at (301) 458-4600 or ambcare@cdc.gov. For additional information on NCHS data products, please call CDC-INFO at 800-CDC-INFO (800-232-4636), TTY (888-232-6348), Monday-Friday 8am-8pm EST, or use the CDC-INFO online request form at https://www.cdc.gov/info. NCHS website: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/