The Utility of a Novel Definition of Health Care Regions in the United States in the Era of COVID-19: A Validation of the Pittsburgh Atlas Using Pneumonia Admissions.

ABSTRACT:

Study objective

The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has underscored the need to understand health care in a regional context. However, there are multiple definitions of health care regions available for conducting geospatial analyses. In this study, we compare the novel Pittsburgh Atlas, which defined regions for emergency care, with the existing definitions of regions, counties, and the Dartmouth Atlas, with respect to nonemergent acute medical conditions using pneumonia admissions.

Methods

We identified patients hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of pneumonia or a primary admitting diagnosis of sepsis with a secondary diagnosis of pneumonia in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's State Inpatient Databases. We calculated the percentage of region concor

SUBMITTER: Dalton MK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8612818 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature