Topeka – The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) Bureau of Epidemiology and Public Health Informatics (BEPHI) has released “Most Frequent Conditions Treated in Kansas Community Hospitals, Excluding – Maternity, The State of Kansas and the Counties, 2007-2009.”

The information identifies priority populations to inform the initiation of community health assessment activities, design public health programs and develop public health policy. Community health assessment is a process many local health departments and all non-profit hospitals are starting as part of either national health department accreditation or hospitals meeting federal requirements.

Some state level findings include:

• The older the age group, the higher the rate of hospital discharge.
• Females (99.2/1,000 population) have a slightly higher hospitalization rates than males (81.6/1,000 population).
• Non-Hispanics (79.2/1,000 population) have a higher rate of hospital discharge than Hispanics (33.2/1,000 population).
• The three most frequent conditions for which Kansans were discharged from the hospital include psychoses, major joint replacement or reattachment of lower extremity and simple pneumonia and pleurisy age 17 or greater with complications.

County level rankings show:

• The three counties with the greatest number of hospital discharges per 1,000 population are Graham (294), Trego (289) and Morton (249) counties.
• The three counties with the highest hospital mean length of stay per 1,000 population are Ness (20.78 days), Edwards, (7.28 days) and Ottawa (6.27 days).
• The three counties with the highest mean age are Decatur (age 73.47), Cheyenne (age 73.46) and Wallace (age 73.44).

The full report is available at https://kic.kdhe.state.ks.us/kic/OHA/hcdgb.html.