Geographic Variation in Potentially Preventable Inpatient Stays for Chronic Health Conditions, 2016: Statistical Brief #264

This Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Statistical Brief examines State- and substate region-level variation in potentially preventable hospital inpatient stays for chronic health conditions among adults using the 2016 State Inpatient Databases (SID). Statistics are presented for 32 States that, at the time this Statistical Brief was written, had released 2016 quality indicator data through the Community-Level Statistics path of HCUPnet, an online query tool for county and substate region-level statistics. Potentially preventable stays were defined using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Prevention Quality Indicators (PQIs), developed to identify hospitalizations for ambulatory care-sensitive conditions. The population rates of potentially preventable inpatient stays among adults for chronic conditions overall and for three specific chronic conditions—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure (CHF), and diabetes—are presented for each State. Maps display the variation in rates within substate regions. Data are suppressed for substate regions if they are based on a small number of inpatient stays or hospitals, if they are statistically unstable, or if reporting was incomplete.