Reducing potentially preventable hospitalizations, i.e., hospital admissions for certain acute illnesses or chronic conditions that might not have required hospitalization if they had been managed through better access to and utilization of outpatient primary care in clinical settings or doctor’s offices, is a key mechanism by which health care costs can be reduced.
The national and state-level estimates on the cost of potentially preventable pediatric hospitalizations offered by State Health Compare are available for a number of years using data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. State specific results were calculated using the State Inpatient Databases. Users should note that a break in data series occurred in 2016 due to a switch from ICD-9 to ICD-10 codes.
