National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) & National Hospital Ambulatory Care Survey (NHAMCS)

Dataset Summary

The National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) are nationally representative surveys conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) to study the use of ambulatory medical care services in the United States.

NAMCS focuses on office-based ambulatory care visits, while NHAMCS includes hospital-based outpatient departments and emergency department visits. Strengths of these datasets include detailed and relatively clean diagnosis and medication data, information on services provided by physicians and advanced practice clinicians, and limited vital signs and biomarker data. Because sampling is based on visits rather than individuals, the surveys are best suited for visit-level analyses.