American journal of preventive medicine
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Firearm-related injuries are a serious public health problem in the United States. Despite the magnitude of this problem, prior national estimates of nonfatal, firearm-related morbidity have been limited to an emergency department-based surveillance system. The objective of this study was to assess and report the information available on firearm-related injuries in an existing national database, derived from hospital discharge data. ⋯ Firearm-related injuries rank highest among all conditions in the number of uninsured hospital stays, and the average LOS is much longer compared to other medical conditions. National estimates derived from the NIS are consistent with previous estimates, and NIS provides additional information not available from other data sources.