Definition: Percentage of hospital discharges among children ages 0-17 for the 11 most common primary diagnoses, excluding childbirth (e.g., in 2020, 5.4% of hospitalizations among California children were for a primary diagnosis of asthma/bronchitis).
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. Coding for the following primary diagnoses changed in mid-2015: asthma/bronchitis, diabetes, fractures, metabolic/nutritional disorders, pneumonia/pleurisy, poisoning, seizures/headaches, traumatic injuries, and viral illnesses/fevers; use caution when comparing data across time for these diagnoses. These data exclude mental disorders related to substance abuse. 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. For years prior to 2014, the notation S refers to numbers and percentages that have been suppressed because there were fewer than 5 hospitalizations for that primary diagnosis. For years 2014 and later, S refers to numbers and percentages that have been suppressed because there were fewer than 11 hospitalizations for that primary diagnosis. 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.
