Drug Overdose ER-Inpatient Visits Definitions

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

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

Not Reportable

At the County level or higher rates (and percents) based on 1-4 events are not reported due to statistical reliability reasons. At sub-county level (Census Tract or County Commission District), rates and percents based on 0-4 are not reported. This assures confidentiality.

Trendable Maps

Trendable maps are a series of choropleth maps showing change in spatial distribution of data in a selected area over selected period of time. Trendable maps share the same data class breaks which allows easy comparison between each map in the series.

Mapping Units:

• County to create a map of a selected geography: counties, Public Health District(s) or Perinatal Region(s); or
• Public Health District to create a map of the state by the 18 Public Health Districts; or
• Perinatal Region to create a map of the state by the 6 Perinatal Regions.

Visible Layers:

Cities/Towns

A mix of both incorporated places (legal entities) and census designated places or CDPs (statistical entities). An incorporated place is established to provide governmental functions for a concentration of people. Places always nest within a state, but may extend across county and county subdivision boundaries. An incorporated place usually is a city, town, village, or borough, but can have other legal descriptions. CDPs are delineated to provide data for settled concentrations of population that are identifiable by name, but are not legally incorporated under the laws of the state in which they are located. Each dot represents the centroid of the geographical area of the city/town. Click on the dot to get the city or town name. Reference Source: U.S. Census, January 1, 2013.

GA Senate Districts

Electoral districts from which State Senators are elected. The Georgia Constitution limits the number to not more than 56 single member districts. Senate districts are apportioned based on population. Layer Source: https://www.legis.ga.gov/, Adopted 2021 – Effective for 2022 Elections.

Hospitals

Hospitals are the non-Federal acute-care inpatient medical facilities in Georgia. Click on the symbol to get the name. Reference Source: Georgia Hospital Association, 2021.

Interstates

Interstates are the freeways that are part of the Interstate Highway System in Georgia. The Interstate Highway System connects major cities within the United States. Click on the line to get the Interstate number. Layer Source: Esri, March 1, 2012.

Major Roads

Major roads are a combination of both federal and state highways connecting cities and towns. Click on the line to get the route number. Layer Source: Esri, March 1, 2012.

Perinatal Regions

The Perinatal Regions were established by the Department of Public Health in cooperation with the six teaching hospitals located in Atlanta, Albany, Augusta, Columbus, Macon and Savannah. The Regions reflect the hospital referral patterns for high risk pregnant women and newborns. Each of the six hospitals has a Regional Perinatal Center which has contracts with the state and receives funding to care for high risk pregnant women and infants as well as to train staff from other hospitals in perinatal care especially for high risk patients. Reference Source: Georgia Department of Public Health, March 2005.

ZIP Code

Established by the U.S. Postal Service for distribution of mail. Zip codes do not generally respect political boundaries or census areas such as tracts. Zip codes usually do not have clearly identifiable boundaries, often serve a continually changing area, are changed periodically to meet postal requirements, and do not cover all land area in the U.S. Layer Source: Esri, June 1, 2020.

Base Layers:

Base layers are background information to provide contextual references for local-level maps. They are especially suited for tract-level maps and give real-world reference to maps you create in OASIS. There are three toggle-able (on/off) base layers:

Demographic Clusters

Demographic Clusters refer to the socioeconomic status classifications created by OHIP, and are at the census block-group level. More information here: https://oasis.state.ga.us/gis/demographiccluster/DemoClusters2011.htm.

Aerial Photography

Aerial Photography refers to ESRI's World Imagery.

Socioeconomic Vulnerability

Socioeconomic Vulnerability refers to the socioeconomic status domain/subset of the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), and is at the census tract level. Socioeconomic vulnerability ranks tracts within the state on 4 factors: below poverty, unemployed, income, and no high school diploma. Percentile ranking values range from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating greater vulnerability/lower socioeconomic status. Quartiles were used to create class breaks. For more information see https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/placeandhealth/svi/index.html. For data dictionary click here.

Street Map

Street Map refers to ESRI's World Street Map with street-level data for North America.

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Data Classification Methods:

Natural Breaks (Jenks)

This method minimizes within-class variance and maximizes between-class variance in an iterative series of calculations. This method seeks to partition data into classes based on natural groups in the data distribution. Natural breaks occur in the histogram at the low points of valleys. Breaks are assigned in the order of the size of the valleys, with the largest valley being assigned the first natural break.

George F. Jenks is considered a pioneer in GIS educational programs. Through an award from the Fund for Advancement of Science, Jenks identified four key objectives for cartographic training. Robert McMaster and Susanna McMaster; A History of Twentieth-Century American Academic Cartography

Source: Brewer and Pickle. Evaluation of Methods for Classifying Epidemiological Data on Choropleth Maps in a Series. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(4), 2002, pp. 662-681.

Quantiles

• Data values for each enumeration unit (e.g. county or census tract) are ranked from lowest to highest.
• The total number of values is divided by the number of classes specified by the user to determine how many values each class will contain. The object is to obtain a roughly equal number of data values within each class. For example, if you have 100 census tracts and the tract data values are to be classed into 5 classes, each class will have 20 values (100/5 = 20).
• In some cases, an equal number of values will not be placed into each class. For instance, if there are an odd number of enumeration units some classes will have a larger number of data values than others. If data values for the 159 counties of Georgia are divided into 4 classes, then some classes might have 39 data values while others have 40. In addition, identical data values are maintained within the same classes. Continuing the Georgia county example, if 45 of the lowest data values are 0, then the lowest class will have 45 data values all with a value of 0.

The quantiles method of classification is provided because:

• Quantiles classification is one of the simplest methods of classification and is easy to understand and interpret.
• Classes are usually centered on the median, a measure of central tendency, and "they group enumeration units above and below the median into classes with equal frequencies regardless of their values." This makes maps easier to compare with one another.
• Many health-related measures are distributed normally (i.e. a large number of values falling near the middle of the data range with a smaller number of values on the low and high ends of the data range) making quantiles classification a logical classification method.

Source: Brewer and Pickle. Evaluation of Methods for Classifying Epidemiological Data on Choropleth Maps in a Series. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(4), 2002, pp. 662-681.

Definitions:

Age

Ages are presented by Detailed Age Groups, Lifestages and Single Year of Age which is created by the Department of Public Health, OHIP. Also, note that selecting "all ages" will supercede any start and end age selection. Uncheck "all ages" to make an age-specific selection.

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. 

Data Classes

Also referred to as "class breaks" or groupings of data.

ER-Inpatient Visits

The number of ER Visits and Hospital Discharges from non-Federal, acute-care, inpatient facilities. Only ER Visits and Hospital Discharges of Georgia residents who were seen in a Georgia facility are included.

Patients can be counted more than once if readmitted. Patients who were admitted through the ER but subsequently admitted as an inpatient are counted only once.

ER Visits and Hospital Discharges include patients discharged living or dead.

Since the number and rate reflect only ER Visits/Hospital Discharges, they do not include all existing cases (prevalence) or new cases (incidence) among residents of Georgia. ER-Inpatient Visits are reported by date of discharge, not admitting date.

ER-Inpatient Visit Rate

Formula = [Number of ER-Inpatient visits / Population] * 100,000.

Ethnicity

Hispanic or Latino includes persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race. Non-Hispanic + Hispanic may not equal the total number of events due to persons of unknown ethnicity.

International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, (ICD-10)

An alphanumeric coding scheme that replaces ICD-9, and used for mortality data since 1999. ICD-10 codes were developed by the World Health Organization Collaborating Centres for Classification of Diseases.

Lifestages

An age year grouping methodology based upon predictable mortality. Georgia uses the following Lifestages: <1 Infancy, 1-4 Early Childhood, 5-12 Later Childhood, 13-19 Adolescence, 20-29 Early Adulthood, 30-44 Young Adulthood, 45-59 Middle Adulthood, 60-74 Late Adulthood, and 75+ Older Adulthood. The highest value for age is 120 years.

Formula = [Number of cause-specific deaths in the selected geography(ies) / Number of deaths in the selected geography(ies)] * 100

Payor

Payor is the primary entity responsible for payment of services. Values for Payor include:

• Medicaid, based on Title XIX of the Social Security Act, is a Federal-State matching entitlement program that pays for medical assistance for certain vulnerable and needy individuals and families with low incomes and resources;
• PeachCare for Kids (Georgia's State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)) is a program that provides comprehensive health care insurance for children through the age of 18 who do not qualify for Medicaid and live in households with incomes at or below the federal poverty level;
• Medicare is a health insurance program for people age 65 or older, some disabled people under age 65, and people of all ages with End-Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure treated with dialysis or a transplant);
• Private Insurance includes Blue Cross / Blue Shield, HMO/Managed Care, Commercial Insurance, Other non-specified Managed Care, PPO (Preferred Provider Organization), POS (Point of Service Provider),State Health Benefit Plan (SHBP); and
• Self Pay includes patients with no proof of insurance, patients filing their own insurance claims, patients paying their own bills, Hill-Burton cases, charity cases, etc.; and
• Other (All other plans)
• Unknown Payor

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 America), 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.

Map Tools

	Zoom In: Select this button and then click on the map to enlarge the map. You can also click down and drag your mouse to define an area to zoom to.
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	Print Map: Click on this button to get a printable copy of the map in PNG format as it appears at the moment. Disable any pop-up blockers. Right click on the preview and you can choose to save, copy or print the preview. The preview can also be dragged and dropped to a folder or desktop.

V1.8 (11/9/2022)