Overview of Disease Severity Measures Disseminated with the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) and Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID)

Adding severity adjustment measures to the HCUP Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) and Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) will significantly enhance the datasets for research purposes. An evaluation of alternative severity adjustment systems was conducted, focusing on those systems that require only hospital administrative data. The evaluation was conducted for AHRQ by an outside researcher who is not affiliated with any severity software vendor (Mark Hornbrook, Ph.D, Center for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente, Northwest Region). The goal of the evaluation was to select the best, most comprehensive measures of disease severity for inclusion in HCUP data. Four systems were selected to disseminate with the NIS and KID: APS-DRGs, APR-DRGs, Disease Staging, and the AHRQ comorbidity measures.