Note that figures by race primarily for residents of Appling county are invalid due to Appling Healthcare System race reporting.
On 12/05/2019 re-geocoded data were posted to correct an error in sub-county geographies that affected certain counties. County-level counts did not change.
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.
Candler County experienced a significant drop in Hospital Discharges and ER Visits due to non-reporting. Residents of Bulloch, Evans, Emanuel and Tattnall counties were also slightly affected.
On 10/1/15, diagnosis codes switched from ICD9 to ICD10-CM. The majority of cause categories stayed in trend, however some did not. Suffocation, Influenza, Bronchitis, and Asthma saw decreases. Disorders Related to Drug Use (under Mental and Behavioral Disorders) and All Other Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease saw increases. These changes could be 1) real and/or 2) reflect true differences in coding between ICD9 and ICD10, and/or 3) reflect difficulty in adoption of reporting ICD10-CM codes.
If querying all "External Causes" or certain subcategories within the External Causes category, there is an undercount of ER Visits for year 2015 only. This undercount primarily affects residents of DeKalb, Fulton, and Cobb counties, and is most pronounced in ages 0-19.
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.
Due to ICD10-CM coding rules being more widely adopted, there are some significant changes in certain disease categories.
In Hospital Discharge data, Bacterial Pneumonia doubled, while Hypertension, Iron Deficiency Anemia, and Kidney/Urinary Infection show sharp decreases. Diabetes: Overall diabetes counts remain in trend, but Diabetes Mellitus without mention of Complications or Unspecified Hypoglycemia shows a sharp decrease, while Diabetes with other specified or unspecified complications increased.
In ER data, even though overall Diabetes counts remained in trend, Diabetes Mellitus without mention of Complications or Unspecified Hypoglycemia shows a very sharp decrease, while Diabetes with other specified or unspecified complications doubles.
If querying Ethnicity there is an undercount in Discharge data for year 2016 and beyond due to several facilities not capturing Ethnicity. Overall ~9% of all discharges did not report Ethnicity. Generally, use caution when looking at any rates and numbers by Hispanic Ethnicity. Data prior to 2016 are either too unreliable or not available.
Content Version 11/17/2020