Definition: Percentage of hospital discharges among children ages 0-17, excluding newborns, by payer expected to cover the greatest share of expenses for treatment (e.g., in 2020, Medi-Cal was the expected source of payment for 50.7% of hospitalizations among California children).
Data Source: California Dept. of Health Care Access and Information custom tabulation (Feb. 2021).
Footnote: Data are based on the number of hospitalizations, not the number of children hospitalized. Data are limited to hospital admissions; emergency department visits that do not result in admission are excluded. Detailed descriptions of payment sources are available from the Dept. of Health Care Access and Information. County-level data reflect the patient's county of residence, not the county in which the hospitalization occurred. Cases with unknown county of residence are included in California totals. Data are excluded for cases of patients with erroneous birth dates and for erroneous, unknown, or unreported sources of payment. The notation S refers to numbers and percentages that have been suppressed because there were, depending on the year, fewer than 5 (2013 and earlier) or fewer than 20 (2014 and later) hospitalizations with that expected source of payment, and to percentages that have been suppressed because the value was less than 0.1%. Changes to admissions coding in 2017 could introduce variation in the exclusion of newborn cases; for more information, see the California Inpatient Data Reporting Manual.
