TOPEKA – The Kansas Department of Health and Environment Bureau of Epidemiology and Public Health Informatics has released “Most Frequent Conditions Treated in Kansas Community Hospitals, Excluding – Maternity, The State of Kansas and the Counties, 2007-2009.” This report is based on community hospital discharge data provided by the Kansas Hospital Association.
Knowledge about the most frequent health conditions for which Kansans are discharged from Kansas community hospitals identifies priority populations to inform the initiation of community health assessment activities, design public health programs and develop public health policy. Community health assessment is a process many local health departments and all non-profit hospitals are starting as part of either national health department accreditation or hospitals meeting federal requirements.
As health departments and hospitals start the health assessment process, the report will serve as important data on the 20 most frequently treated conditions, excluding maternity, for the state and for each county. Data comparisons by county can help determine how hospital discharges vary by location. Demographic breakdowns are presented by age group, sex and race.
Some state level findings include the older the age group, the higher the rate of hospital discharge.
Females (99.2/1,000 population) have a slightly higher hospitalization rates than males (81.6/1,000 population).
Non-Hispanics (79.2/1,000 population) have a higher rate of hospital discharge than Hispanics (33.2/1,000 population).
The three most frequent conditions for which Kansans were discharged from the hospital include psychoses, major joint replacement or reattachment of lower extremity and simple pneumonia and pleurisy age 17 or greater with complications.
County level rankings show:
The three counties with the greatest number of hospital discharges per 1,000 population are Graham (294), Trego (289) and Morton (249) counties.
The three counties with the highest hospital mean length of stay per 1,000 population are Ness (20.78 days), Edwards, (7.28 days) and Ottawa (6.27 days).
The three counties with the highest mean age are Decatur (age 73.47), Cheyenne (age 73.46) and Wallace (age 73.44).
The report uses Diagnostic Related Groups (DRGs) and Major Diagnostic Categories (MDCs) to summarize information on causes of hospitalization. DRGs (Version 24) are summary groupings used to determine how much the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pays the hospital for Medicare-covered individual patient care. These groupings are based on primary and other accompanying diagnoses and procedure codes, age, sex, discharge status and the presence of health related complications. MDCs combine DRG summary groupings into more general health categories.
The full report is available at https://kic.kdhe.state.ks.us/kic/OHA/hcdgb.html. Contact Rachel Lindbloom of the KDHE/Bureau of Epidemiology and Public Health Informatics (BEPHI) at 785-296-5281 with any questions about the report.