The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released a new Methods Report entitled Evaluation of the State Ambulatory Surgery Databases, Available through the HCUP Central Distributor, 2008 (Methods Report #2011-02).

This report provides an overview of the contents and uses of the HCUP Central Distributor (CD) 2008 State Ambulatory Surgery Database (SASD) and compares the SASD-CD database to the 2008 American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey. This report provides information about the volume of records coming from hospital-based and non-hospital based facilities and also explores the types of procedures performed that qualify as ambulatory surgery and the use of ICD-9-CM and CPT coding systems in the 2008 SASD-CD.

Methods Report #2011-02: Evaluation of the State Ambulatory Surgery Databases, Available through the HCUP Central Distributor, 2008 is available on the HCUP-US Website.