To Our Stakeholders and Sponsors

The National Health Care Surveys are designed to answer key questions of interest to health care policy makers, public health professionals, and researchers. Collectively, our surveys have a combination of design features that make them unique. They are nationally representative, provider-based, and cover a broad spectrum of health care settings. Within each setting, data are collected from a sample of organizations that provide care (such as home health care agencies, inpatient hospital units, and physician offices) and from samples of patient (or discharge) encounters within the sampled organizations.

Each survey collects core information which remains stable over time. Consequently, trends in the types of care delivered in each setting can be monitored in an objective and reliable manner and can be examined in relation to characteristics of providers, patients, and clinical management of patients' care. In addition, the surveys are flexible enough to accommodate special questions or modules, and to sample new provider organizations as new information is needed.

• How can my organization sponsor a new module or add questions to a future survey?
• What are examples of topics that have been added in past surveys?
• What professional groups endorse our surveys?