Report: Area counties have higher preventable hospitalization rate than state

Five of eight local counties had rates of “potentially preventable hospitalizations” higher than the statewide rate, according to a new report. Luzerne County’s rate per 10,000 residents was nearly 15 percent higher.

The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, an independent state agency, released a research brief Tuesday that “used a set of prevention quality indicators developed by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality” to estimate hospitalizations “that might have been avoided with effective primary or preventative care.”

The report looked at people 18 and older from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019, so it did not cover any period after the COVID-19 pandemic developed this year, though it did note the pandemic could increase rates if people couldn’t schedule outpatient care or doctor visits due to the pandemic.

It defined potentially preventable in 10 categories: heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma in adults age 40 and older, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, diabetes with long term complications, diabetes with short-term complications, uncontrolled diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), lower extremity amputation and asthma in those ages 18 to 39.

Statewide, the report determined 153,136 hospitalizations were preventable, creating a rate of 150.8 per 10,000 residents. In Luzerne County, 4,413 cases were deemed potentially preventable for a rate of 173 per 10,000.

In Lackawanna County, there were 3,000 potentially preventable hospitalizations, for a rate of 179. Among Luzerne County and seven neighboring counties, Schuylkill County had the highest rate of 181.8 per 10,000 residents, with 2,074 potentially preventable hospitalizations. The lowest local rate was 106.9 in rural Sullivan County, with a total of 58 cases.

If you want to move to the county with the lowest rate in the state, you need to drive four counties west, to Union, with a rate of 77.5 per 10,000 residents.

Cameron County had the highest rate, at 237.2 cases per 10,000, but there’s a big caveat: It is a lightly populated county, with about 4,500 people, so small changes in numbers can lead to big changes in the rate. The total number of preventable hospitalizations was estimated at 88. Only Sullivan County, with about 1,500 more people, had a lower total at 58, but the difference in population was enough for a big difference in rate per 10,000: 106.9.