At a glance
- Hospitals selected to participate in the National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) complete the Annual Hospital Interview.
- During the interview, you will provide information about your hospital, like admissions numbers and trauma level.
- You will complete the interview through our secure web portal.
About the Interview
The Annual Hospital Interview (AHI) is a yearly supplemental part of the National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS). We ask all hospitals invited to participate in NHCS to complete the AHI. We use AHI data to create national estimates of hospital care and resource use.
During the AHI, you will provide summary administrative information for the calendar year on visits to your inpatient, outpatients, and emergency departments. This information will be analyzed with data from other hospitals to provide insight about participating facilities and the healthcare system.
AHI Portal
Participants can access the Annual Hospital Interview through our AHI Portal. Hospitals invited to complete the AHI will receive an invitation email with a four-digit identifier and instructions to access the web portal. The invitation email will be sent by ahi-support@cdc.gov.
The four-digit number included in your invitation and on the AHI Portal is an anonymized NHCS-sampled hospital identifier. This hospital identifier helps us protect the confidentiality of your hospital and your data. If you do not receive your invitation or if you lose or forget your identifier, contact the AHI support team at ahi-support@cdc.gov.
Get help
Contact the AHI support team with questions and technical support requests. Include your four-digit NHCS-sampled hospital identifier in all communications. Do not send data. Do not include your hospital name or address.
Questionnaire
The AHI is broken into short sections of questions about visits to your hospital departments and other relevant topics. The AHI includes no more than 13 questions and takes about an hour to complete.
You can get the full list of questions in the AHI preview questionnaire. This preview questionnaire is for planning purposes only. You cannot use it to complete the interview.
You must enter responses to the AHI questions in the web portal in order to complete the AHI. Do not send any data through email.
Completing the AHI
The web portal is the only way to complete the AHI. In the AHI Portal, you can find definitions of terms, more information about the questions, and a list of acronyms. If these resources don't answer your question, contact the AHI support team at ahi-support@cdc.gov.
As you complete the AHI, you can follow your progress. If you are responsible for multiple hospitals, you can also follow the progress of each hospital.
If you need to change an answer after submitting your AHI, you can still make changes and edits until the completion deadline. If you make changes, you will need to resubmit your responses.