OBJECTIVES: The priority of hospital health care results and costs in transitional countries, needs to avoid non-standardized, unreliable or non-existent data. To achieve this goal we developed a hospital discharge registry in Argentina METHODS: A Minimum Discharge Data Set (MDS),   designed and extracted from a 1 year output, 2007-2008, of 3 non-profit  hospitals with information systems. Cost and result indicators,  harmonized according to WHO and HCUPS (USA) terminology, groupers (Clinical Classification Software-CCS single level-SL, 2009) of primary diagnosis (Dx1) and procedures (Px1),  (#CCS [descriptive term]), total costs (CT$) and median per discharge cost ($, 25P-75P-percentiles), in international dollars PPP, (UN Data: 1Arg$ = 1.608 PPP, 2008) were obtained, generating a Pareto ranking of 10 most frequent  CCS discharge codes. RESULTS: 58116 discharges with 17125 Dx1 and 9163 Px1 where obtained. The first 10 CCS-SL Dx1 were: #218 [living recently born] ($ 229,  117-251); #45 [chemotherapy, radiotherapy], ($4705; 1946-8212); #196 [pregnancy and normal delivery], ($ 4.829; 2.958-5.985); # 149 [biliary disorders], ($ 5.932; 4.700-9.268);  #122 [Pneumonia], ($ 2.193;  1.280- 4.856); #101 [coronary atherosclerosis], ($ 22.090; 5.586-38.692); #108 [congestive heart failure, non- hypertensive], ($ 1.918;  989-6.156); # 195 [other complications of delivery], ($ 6.940; 3.971-8.341);  #144 [unspecified neoplasia], ($ 12.975;  4.511-28.960), y #203 [osteoarthritis], ($ 13.490; 8.753- 20.305); comprised  29,4% of discharges, with a CT$ $ 142.852.765  (23,7%). The procedure related CCS of delivery are cesarean section (#134) and other birth related (#137,#135) represented 6.95% of primary procedures (Px1). The most costly procedure was Px1 # ($ 15.834;  4.860-32.168). The first 10 Px constitutes a 17,6% of discharges and a 23.9% of procedure CT$.  CONCLUSIONS: Transitional countries can develop this  information, but harmonization is required. We obtained 30% of total costs (CT$) and per discharge costs ($) with a  Pareto rank.  Future studies need to improve within country generalizability of  results.