Special Notes

• Community Health Profiles
• Hospital Profiles
• Specific Hospital Notes

Community Health Profiles

Primary Care Capacity
As previously noted, primary care capacity was calculated based on previously suggested standards from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration’s Bureau of Primary Care. These standards, based on a 40-hour work week, suggest that physicians should have the capacity to provide 4200 encounters per year and mid-level providers (nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified nurse midwives) should be able to deliver 2100 encounters per FTE. It has been argued by some providers that these standards should be lowered; however, Project staff’s exploration of practice standards supports the earlier HRSA guidance. Specifically, the Medical Group Management Association suggests the following annual standards for encounters by FTE practitioners:

• Family practice physicians @ 4400 encounters
• Pediatricians @ 4800 encounters
• Obstetricians @ 3000 encounters
• Nurse practitioners @ 2500 encounters

Thus, physician capacity was calculated based on 4200 encounters per FTE and capacity for mid-level providers is based on 2100 encounters. Note that capacity estimates for mid-level providers at Chicago Department of Public Health sites is based on 4200 encounters per FTE as that is the standard applied by that agency.

Hospitalization Data
Hospitalization data is available by zipcode. In order to report the data by community area, a conversion table was setup showing for each zipcode the proportion of its area that was in each community area that fell within each boundaries. The hospitalizations for each zipcode were then divided up and allocated proportionally to the community areas found in the zipcode. For example, if a given zipcode had 20% of each area in community area 23, 30% in area 24, and 50% in area 25, then the hospitalizations occuring to residents of that zipcode were divided up accordingly. Total hospitalizations by community area were then determined by adding up all of the allocations for each community.

Back to Top

Hospital Profiles

Number of Beds by Type
Some hospitals report a larger number of Set Up & Staffed Beds than Licensed Beds. Most often this will occur for a specific category such as Obstetrics and Gynecology. There are three possible explanations for this discrepancy:

1. An error in data reporting by the hospital.
2. An error in data entry. The IDPH AHQ is tabulated manually.
3. Licensed beds are reported as of December 31^st of the prior year and the hospital may
   have been approved for a larger number of beds during the survey year.

Percentage of Patients by Payor Source
Some hospitals report a large number of patients with an "Other/unknown" payor source. This occurs because at the time the Uniform Discharge Dataset was submitted not all claims had been fully adjudicated or processed for payment. As a result, the discharge was not attributed to a payor source. It is unlikely that there was a large shift in the distribution of the patient population from year to year as the data suggest.

Personnel
Figures for hospital physician personnel may seem either low or high because physicians provide services under different arrangements at hospitals. Most commonly, physicians are granted admitting privileges at a hospital, but are not employees of the hospital. However, hospitals may employ some specialists, such as radiologists. There are several hospitals in Chicago that employ their physicians, such as University of Chicago Hospital and John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County.

The individual physician, dentist, and nurse categories include only those personnel engaged in clinical practice. Physician and nurse administrators are reported as “Other” personnel.

Hospitalization Coding
Coding used for Leading Causes of Hospitalization in the Community Health Profile and Top 10 Patient Diagnoses in the Hospital Profile. Based on first-listed diagnosis and diagnosis related group (DRG).

Back to Top

Specific Hospital Notes

Evanston Hospital
Personnel data are not available for Evanston Hospital because they report to the AHA Annual Survey of Hospitals for the entire Evanston Northwestern Healthcare system.

Kindred Hospital – Chicago North
At the end of 2000, Kindred Healthcare purchased its Chicago North facility from Vencor Corporation. The Kindred Hospital – Chicago North uniform data set (UDS), only reports information for the facility under the Kindred Healthcare license. Thus, the 2000 data represents only a portion of the business at that site in 2000 and no comparative data is provided.

John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County
Stroger Hospital reports more set up & staffed beds than licensed beds because the Cook County Bureau of Health Services applied for and received a license for its new facility in 2001 which reduced the number of licensed beds reported that year. In 2001, the Bureau provided all services in the old hospital building that was licensed for a larger number of beds.

In the Near West Side Community Profile, the number of outpatient visits reported under Hospital Capacity and Utilization includes visits to the Fantus Health Center of Cook County. Because of the important role that Fantus plays in outpatient primary care, visits to this center are also reported under the Estimated Primary Care Capacity and Utilization section in the profile.

Data Sources | Profile Contents | Identification of Facilities Included in the Profiles |
Glossary of Terms/Definitions of Measures | Challenges | Special Notes

Back to Top