Known Data Issues

2005 Hospital Discharge and ER Data:

Note that figures by race primarily for residents of Appling county are invalid due to Appling Healthcare System race reporting.

2008 Death Data:

Due to collection and processing issues that were beyond our control, there may be some mis-match between cause of death and demographics.

All Years Death Data:

Hispanic Ethnicity is most likely under-reported on the death certificate. Several studies conducted in different states indicate that there may be under-reporting of Hispanic ethnicity on death certificates. A cursory review of linked Georgia data shows a 35% decrease from Hispanic-at-birth to Non-Hispanic at death, and a 25% decrease from Hispanic-mother-during-delivery to Non-Hispanic at death.

2009 Hospital Discharge and ER Data:

If querying all "External Causes" or the subcategory "Falls" within the External Causes category, there is an undercount in these events in Discharge data for year 2009 only. This undercount primarily affects residents of DeKalb, Fulton, and Cobb counties, and is most pronounced in ages 0-19.

2012 Hospital Discharge and ER Data:

Please note that Hart County Hospital closed July 1, 2012 but did not report any data for 2012. Numbers may be artificially deflated for Hart and surrounding counties.

2013 Hospital Discharge and ER Data:

Candler County experienced a significant drop in Hospital Discharges due to non-reporting. Residents of Bulloch, Evans, Emanuel and Tattnall counties were also slightly affected.

"Mental and Behavioral Disorders" were underreported primarily for residents of Clayton and Spalding counties. Residents of Fulton, DeKalb, and Fayette were affected to a lesser degree.

2015 (4th quarter) & 2016 Hospital Discharge and ER data:

Effective October 1, 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services required health care organizations and providers to use the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) to code medical encounters in the hospital and emergency department settings. This transition from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM caused the data for certain categories to require additional processing, or appear to be out of trend. Please see the Definitions page for further detail. Note: Due to evolving ICD10 standards, adjustments were made to some 2015 (4th quarter) records on 12/18/17.

2017 (and thereafter) Hospital Discharge Data:

Due to ICD10-CM coding rules being more widely adopted, there are some significant changes in certain disease categories.

While the total for the Major Cardiovascular Diseases category remains consistent with previous years, Hypertensive Heart Disease shows a 10-fold increase since ICD10-CM came into adoption, and High Blood Pressure drops by half.

A similar situation exists for Respiratory Diseases: Respiratory Distress of Newborn and All other Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases show large increases.

Other categories seeing increases include Infections Specific to the Perinatal Period (7-fold increase) and Accidental Discharge of Firearms (2-fold increase).

2017 (and thereafter) ER Data:

Due to ICD10-CM coding rules being more widely adopted, there are some significant changes in certain disease categories.

While the total for the Major Cardiovascular Diseases category remains consistent with previous years, Hypertensive Heart Disease shows a 4-fold increase since ICD10-CM came into adoption.

A similar situation exists for Respiratory Distress of Newborn and Alcoholic Liver Disease, both of which show a 2-fold increase.

NCHS Rankable Cause - Influenza and Pneumonia:

On 7.21.2021 the NCHS Rankable Cause “Influenza and Pneumonia” was updated to include ICD10 code J09 to reflect evolving standards from NCHS.

Content Version 7/21/2021