California County-Level Preventable Hospitalization Rates for 14 Conditions

California statewide and county-level data tracks hospitalization counts and rates for 10 ambulatory care sensitive conditions and 4 composite measures. The dataset, provided by the State of California, is used to assess community health service quality by monitoring potentially preventable admissions for conditions like diabetes complications, COPD, and heart failure. It includes notes on a 2015 ICD code transition affecting data comparability.

Use Cases

• Analyze county-level hospitalization rates for diabetes short-term complications to identify geographic disparities in outpatient care access.
• Compare trends in chronic condition composite measures (e.g., COPD, hypertension) before and after the 2015 ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM code transition.
• Assess community health quality by correlating rates for acute conditions like community-acquired pneumonia with local demographic or socioeconomic data.
• Benchmark county performance against statewide averages for the lower-extremity amputation among patients with diabetes indicator.

Strengths

• Focuses on 10 specific ambulatory care sensitive conditions and 4 composite measures for targeted analysis.
• Provides data at both statewide and county-level geographic granularity for California.
• Documents a known data discontinuity (the 2015 ICD code change) to inform time-series analysis.

Limitations

• The specific number of rows, columns, and temporal coverage is not provided in the input.
• Data for 2015 is incomplete, containing only three quarters due to the ICD code transition, limiting annual comparisons.
• Hospitalization counts may be small for rare conditions or small counties, affecting rate stability.

Provenance

Source

State of California, Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI).

Collection Method

Hospital discharge data reported to HCAI (formerly OSHPD), categorized by ambulatory care sensitive conditions.

Time Range

Includes data up to at least 2016, with a noted transition in coding systems effective October 1, 2015.

Freshness

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Geography

State of California, with breakdowns by county.