Resident Hospital Discharges by Severity of Illness at the Regional Level

Ronald Lagoe,Gretchen Lagoe

doi:10.4236/crcm.2019.85016

Abstract

In the twentieth century, government sponsored health planning focused on the use of services by population in the United States. This case study evaluated the impact of severity of illness for resident hospital discharges for 2017, the latest time period for which this information was available. It focused on the Central New York Health Service Area, one of the original health planning populations. The study demonstrated that patients at Extreme severity of illness constituted similar percentages of adult medicine and adult surgery populations in the Central New York Region. The sizes of Moderate severity of illness populations were also similar. The study identified considerable differences in the sizes of Minor and Major severity of illness populations for adult medicine and adult surgery in the Central New York Region. These differences resulted from large numbers of healthy patients in the adult surgery population. They were admitted for orthopedic procedures and procedures to address obesity.

Highlights

In the United States and elsewhere, health care is closely associated with community and regional populations
This case study evaluated the impact of severity of illness for resident hospital discharges for 2017, the latest time period for which this information was available
Within adult medicine and adult surgery, the analysis focused on comparison of resident county populations for patients with Minor, Moderate, Major, and Extreme severity of illness

Summary

Introduction

In the United States and elsewhere, health care is closely associated with community and regional populations. Health planning has focused on the utilization of services at regional and community levels These initiatives have included the Health Systems Agencies developed by the federal government in the twentieth century, as well as State and local efforts to evaluate and regulate providers [3] [4]. They were administered by state or local planning staffs [3] Most of these health planning programs were implemented before the use of current approaches to health care reimbursement and evaluation. They frequently employed relatively simple analytical tools, such as resource to population ratios. Recently interest in the connection between utilization and demographics has been renewed in population health [8] [9]

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Discussion