Health Care Indicators for the United States

This article presents statistics on health care utilization, prices, expenses, employment, and workhours as well as on national economic activity. Some of these statistics are based on sample surveys conducted monthly or quarterly by government agencies or private organizations and are available 1 to 3 months after the completion of the period. They provide the first glimpse at changes occurring within the general economy and the health care sector. The accompanying tables report quarterly statistics for 1991 and the calendar year aggregation of quarterly information in the past 3 to 10 years. Additional tables show change from the same period 1 year earlier. For quarterly information, this calculation permits analysis of quarterly data to focus on the direction and magnitude of changes, without interference introduced by seasonal fluctuations. In the national health accounts, indicators such as these play an important role in the estimation of the latest historical year of health care expenditures. Information that is more comprehensive tends to lag behind the close of a calendar year by 9 to 12 months or more. Therefore, we rely extensively on indicators such as these to anticipate and predict changes in health care sector expenditures for the most recent year. Other indicators help to identify specific reasons (e.g., increases in price inflation or declines in utilization) for expenditure change. In the sections that follow, we will identify important indicators of health care and national economic activity. We will discuss the sources of this information and then describe how it can be used to predict trends in health care expenditures and the share of national economic activity that is consumed by health care purchases. Community hospital statistics