The Diagnosis-Related Groups Statistic (DRG) is an anual complete survey of all fully stationary hospital cases in Germany that were accounted for by case rates. The microdata can be requested via the RDC starting from the survey year 2005.The case rate based DRG accounting system was introduced when the hospital financing was amended in 2000. Starting from 1 January 2004, this accounting system is obligatory for general hospitals.The DRG Statistic is a secundary statistic. The data is not collected by the statistical offices of the Federation and the federal states but by the Institut für das Entgeltsystem im Krankenhaus (InEK). The data for the DRG Statistic are taken from the datasets that the hospitals send to the InEK for accounting purposes. The InEK transmitts a legally exactly defined variable selection of these extensive structure and services data to the Federal Statistical Office.The DRG Statistic includes the continuous fully stationary treatment in the hospital (treatment chain) independent of the number of undergone specialist departments. Paramount are the information on operations and treatments, kind and amount of the invoiced charges (DRG case rates, effective valuation ratio, casemix) as well as main and secondary diagnosis. Besides, sociodemographic characteristics of the hospital cases such as age, sex and living region are recorded.