Development and Maintenance of a National Inventory of Hospitals and Institutions.

The National Center for Health Statistics has recently released this report, describing one of its newest statistical activities. The Center for Statistics has made a comprehensive list of the names and addresses of all American hospitals and institutions in which people reside, and made a mail survey of the establishments on the list to find out their current status and nature of business. This report describes how the inventory was made and presents summary statistics on the number and types of establishments listed in the inventory, the number of beds, and the number of people employed in the establishments. The program has several good features. The inventory will be kept current by adding or deleting establishments that go into or out of business each year. Periodic surveys will be conducted to collect current descriptive statistics about those still in operation. The list will give a basis for selecting representative samples