Mortality/Morbidity Definitions

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All number and rates pertain to place of residence (not occurrence).

If an Age group, Race or Sex are chosen, all rates include only the choices in both the numerator and denominator.

Age-Adjusted Rates
A weighted average of the age-specific rates, where the weights are the proportions of persons in the corresponding age groups of a standard population. The calculation of an Age-Adjusted Rate uses the year 2000 U.S. standard million. Benefit: Controls for differences in age structure so that observed differences in rates across areas such as counties are not due solely to differences in the proportion of people in different age groups in different areas. Rates are per 100,000 population.
Bar chart displayed instead of Dial?
A bar chart will show up instead of a dial when there are less than 20 other counties that have a sufficient number of events to create a valid dial.
Cause of Death
Reported causes of death are based on the underlying cause of death. The underlying cause of death is defined by the World Health Organization as the disease or injury that initiated the sequence of events leading directly to death or as the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury.
Cause of Discharge/ER Visit
Causes are based on the principal diagnosis, except where the principal diagnosis is an injury code. All discharges/ER visits having ICD-9-CM external causes (injuries) are assigned their appropriate External Cause of Injury Code (E-Code) in accordance with STIPDA (State and Territorial Injury Prevention Directors Association) 2003 guidelines. The standards can be found at: http://www.safestates.org/.
Similarly, all hospital discharges/ER visits having ICD-10-CM causes are based on the principal diagnosis, except where the principal diagnosis is an Injury code. If so, the Discharge/ER visit is assigned the appropriate External Cause of Injury in accordance with Safe States guidelines.
Crude Death Rate
Formula = [Number of Deaths / Population] * 100,000. Rates that use Census Population Estimates in the denominator are unable to be calculated when the selected population is Unknown.
Death/Discharge/ER Combined Rates
The total number of deaths, deduplicated discharges, and deduplicated emergency room visits added together. Note that deduplicated discharges and ER visits exclude those discharged dead, as well as readmissions of the same person with the same condition in a calendar year. The intent is to give a measure of total number of people affected by a given condition, by providing a single summary count that minimizes duplicate records.
Formula = [Number of Deaths+Deduplicated Discharges+Deduplicated ER Visits / Population] * 100,000.
Deduplicated Discharges/ER Visits
The number of persons discharged live from non-Federal acute-care inpatient facilities (Hospitals) for illness. Only discharges/ER visits of Georgia residents who were seen in a Georgia facility are included. Persons are counted only once if readmitted for the same chronic condition during a calendar year. Deduplicated discharges/ER visits also excludes people discharged dead, healthy newborn infants, and healthy mothers giving birth to newborn infants. Since the number and rate are derived only from hospitalizations/ER visits, they do not include all existing cases (prevalence) or new cases (incidence) among residents of Georgia.
Deduplicated Discharge Rate
Formula = [Number of Deduplicated Discharges / Population] * 100,000 (formerly used as Morbidity Rate on OASIS). Rates that use Census Population Estimates in the denominator are unable to be calculated when the selected population is Unknown.
Discharges
The number of inpatients discharged from non-Federal acute-care inpatient facilities. Only discharges of Georgia residents who were seen in a Georgia facility are included. Persons can be counted more than once if readmitted. Discharges include people both living and who have died. Since the number and rate are reflect only hospitalizations, they do not include all existing cases (prevalence) or new cases (incidence) among residents of Georgia. Discharges are reported by date of discharge, not admitting date.
Discharge Rate
Formula = [Number of Discharges / Population] * 100,000. Rates that use Census Population Estimates in the denominator are unable to be calculated when the selected population is Unknown.
ER Visits
The number of emergency room visits to non-Federal acute care inpatient facilities. Only ER visits of Georgia residents who were seen in a Georgia facility are included. Persons can be counted more than once if readmitted. Visits include people both living and who have died, but not those admitted as an inpatient to a hospital. Since the number and rate are derived only from ER visits, they do not include all existing cases (prevalence) or new cases (incidence) among residents of Georgia. ER Visits are reported by date of discharge, not admitting date.
Ethnicity
Hispanic or Latino includes persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.
Georgia Rankable Cause Groups
Georgia Rankable Causes are unique to Georgia and were developed to represent mutually exclusive groups of ICD codes that are intended to share common etiology and/or common intervention.
International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM)
A statistical classification system, in use since 1979, that arranges diseases and injuries into groups according to established criteria. It is used to improve comparability of cause of death statistics reported by different governmental entities. Most ICD-9-CM codes are numeric and consist of three, four or five numbers and a description. The codes are revised approximately every 10 years by the World Health Organization and annual updates are published by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), now the Center for Medicare, Medicaid Services.
International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) vs. ICD10
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the Federal agency responsible for use of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision (ICD-10) in the United States, has developed a clinical modification (CM) of the classification for morbidity (hospital and ER data) purposes. The ICD-10 is used to code and classify mortality data from death certificates, having replaced ICD-9 for this purpose as of January 1, 1999. ICD-10-CM is the replacement for ICD-9-CM, effective October 1, 2015 in discharge and ER data.
The ICD-10 is copyrighted by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO has authorized the development of an adaptation of ICD-10 for use in the United States (ICD-10-CM). All modifications to the ICD-10 must conform to WHO conventions for the ICD. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/icd/icd-10-cm/index.html
NCHS Rankable Cause Groups
NCHS Rankable Causes are mutually exclusive cause categories and therefore rankable. They are prepared by the National Center for Health Statistics and used nationwide.
Non-Rural
Any county with 50,000 or more total population according to the United States decennial census of 2010 or any future such census (GA Code § 31-6-2 and 31-7-94.1).
Premature Death Rate (Years of Potential Life Lost 75 (YPLL 75))
YPLL 75 represents the number of years of potential life lost due to death before age 75, as a measure of premature death. The Premature Death Rate (YPLL 75 Rate) is the years of potential life lost before age 75 that occur per 100,000 population less than 75 years of age. Formula = [Total Years of Life Lost before age 75 / Population less than 75 years old] * 100,000. YPLL can be age- and cause-specific. Rates that use Census Population Estimates in the denominator are unable to be calculated when the selected population is Unknown. This method of YPLL calculation uses the actual age at death and therefore is more precise as compared with the pre-defined age range methodology used by NCHS. Please note: The number above the Dials is not the number of deaths but rather the sum of YPLL for the age group chosen (<75 by default).
Prioritize
Answers whether a local rate is statistically significantly higher than the same rate for the State. State rates are the standard against which local rates are compared in order to forecast the number of likely events in a local area. It is a statistic indicating significance at the 95% confidence level. This option is therefore not available for the State as a whole.
Race
Per the Federal Office of Management and Budget, Directive 15 (1997),
  • White is a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa;
  • Black or African-American is a person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa;
  • Asian is a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand and Vietnam;
  • American Indian/Alaska Native is a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central American), and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment;
  • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander is a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands;
  • Multiracial is a person declaring 2 or more of these races.

Note: Rates for years prior to year 2000 use population estimates for the denominator that adhere to a different Federal standard for race: White, Black, Asian or Other Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native. So, unlike years 2000 and after, Multiracial is not included. Also, Asian by itself is not available because it was grouped with Pacific Islander (After 1999 Asian is separate from Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander).

Rates that use Census Population Estimates in the denominator are not calculated when a selected race is not available in the denominator, or zero.

Nevertheless, selections available in OASIS' Race query box reflect the 1997 Race classifications described above. Most of the numerators used in indicators in Oasis *do* have the year 2000 race selections. Therefore, selections of multiple years that span <2000 and 2000+ will return a *number(count)* for all race selections, but the *rates* may be limited by the change in racial classifications the federal government used as noted above. In these cases you will see NA1 in the output cell (NA1 therefore by definition will only show up in rates for the years before 2000).

In some cases, the numerator's race classification may be more precise, or up to date, than the Census population estimate counterpart used in the denominator. You may find that there are a number of births of a given race for a county/age-group selection, but no count of population estimated for the denominator. In such cases where the race selection was available for both the numerator and the denominator, but the denominator's estimate was zero, you will see a NA2. If the numerator was greater than the denominator, but the denominator was > 0, you will see a NA3 returned.
Rural
Any county having a population of less than 50,000 according to the United States decennial census of 2010 or any future such census (GA Code § 31-6-2 and 31-7-94.1).
Sex-Specific rates
PLEASE NOTE: Unless a sex is specifically selected, Breast, Ovarian, Cervical, Uterine, and Prostate and Testes cancers will have both males and females in the numerator and denominator. Note that usually (e.g. as reported in the Vital Statistics Report), Breast, Ovarian, Cervical and Uterine have only females in both the numerator and denominator, while Prostate and Testis have only males in both the numerator and denominator.
Years of Potential Life Lost 75 (YPLL 75)
YPLL 75 represents the number of years of potential life lost due to death before age 75, as a measure of premature death. The YPLL 75 Rate is the years of potential life lost before age 75 that occur per 100,000 population less than 75 years of age. Formula = [Total Years of Life Lost before age 75 / Population less than 75 years old] * 100,000. YPLL can be age- and cause-specific. Rates that use Census Population Estimates in the denominator are unable to be calculated when the selected population is Unknown.This method of YPLL calculation uses the actual age at death and therefore is more precise as compared with the pre-defined age range methodology used by NCHS.
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