June 6, 2007 – For the past 18 months, the National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery has been recruiting ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) for an industry study and would like your participation to improve planning, administrative and evaluation activities by government, professional, scientific, academic and commercial institutions, as well as by private citizens.
The National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery (NSAS) is the only national study of ambulatory surgical care in hospital-based and freestanding ASCs. Data for the NSAS will be collected for approximately 60,000 ambulatory surgery cases from a nationally representative sample of hospital-based and freestanding ambulatory surgery centers.
After nearly ten years of being out of the field, the NSAS data collection instruments were updated to reflect the changing environment in ambulatory surgery. Outside experts from the American College of Surgeons, American Association for the Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities (AAAASF), American Association of Ambulatory Surgery Centers (AAASC), the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), the American Hospital Association (AHA), the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesiologists (SAMBA), the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH), the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the Federated Ambulatory Surgery Association (FASA) and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) provided input into updating the data collection tools used for NSAS.
The basic study population for the NSAS is patients scheduled for surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed in hospital-based and freestanding ambulatory surgery centers. The hospital universe includes non-Federal general, short-stay and children’s hospitals located in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The universe of freestanding ambulatory surgery centers includes facilities which are state licensed or Medicare certified or which provide ambulatory surgery as the primary business activity and operate independently as a separate business.
NSAS participation is important because without it, neither your facility nor others like yours can benefit from being represented in the national description of surgical visits to hospital-based and freestanding ambulatory surgery centers.
To participate, please visit:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hdasd/nsas_participant/nsas3-1.pdf
For further questions or comments related to participation, please contact Karen Lees at:
National Center for Health Statistics Hospital Care Statistics Branch 3311
Toledo Road, Room 3332
Hyattsville, Maryland 20782
P: 301.458.4321
F: 301.458.4032
May 17, 2024 
