Alberta Hospital Inpatient Separation Rates by Local Geographic Area, 2023/2024

2023/2024 fiscal year data provides age-standardized inpatient separation rates per 100,000 population for seven selected health conditions across 132 Local Geographic Areas and Alberta. The dataset measures hospital utilization based on patient separations, including discharge or death, for conditions such as Asthma, Diabetes, and Ischemic Heart Diseases.

Use Cases

• Compare age-standardized separation rates for Asthma, Diabetes, and Influenza across the 132 Local Geographic Areas to identify regional healthcare disparities.
• Analyze hospital utilization for Mental and Behavioural Disorders due to Psychoactive Substance Use versus Pneumonia at both local and provincial Alberta levels.
• Benchmark Local Geographic Area rates for Ischemic Heart Diseases and Pulmonary Heart Diseases against the Alberta-wide age-standardized rate.
• Map geographic variation in inpatient separation rates for the seven selected conditions using the Local Geographic Area boundaries.

Strengths

• Covers 132 distinct Local Geographic Areas within Alberta, enabling granular spatial analysis.
• Includes age-standardized rates for seven specific health conditions, allowing for comparable cross-population study.
• Data is standardized for age distribution, facilitating accurate comparisons across different geographic areas and time periods.

Limitations

• Limited to a single fiscal year (2023/2024), preventing longitudinal or trend analysis.
• Focuses only on seven pre-selected conditions, omitting other potential causes of hospital inpatient separations.
• Underlying raw counts or population denominators are not provided, only the final calculated rates.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta, from the 'Alberta Health Primary Health Care - Community Profiles' report.

Collection Method

Rates calculated from inpatient hospital separation abstracts gathered at discharge, age-standardized by Alberta Health and Alberta Health Services.

Time Range

2023/2024 fiscal year.

Freshness

Data reflects the 2023/2024 fiscal year; metadata was last updated in March 2026.

Geography

Alberta, Canada, broken into 132 Local Geographic Areas (e.g., Lacombe, Red Deer, Calgary West Bow).