Data Reporting 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.

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 Visits due to non-reporting. Residents of Bulloch, Evans, Emanuel and Tattnall counties were also slightly affected.

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 and ER data:

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.

2016 and beyond Hospital Discharge data:

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.