Preventable Hospitalizations is a measure of the discharge rate from hospitals for ambulatory care-sensitive conditions.  Ambulatory care-sensitive conditions are those "for which good outpatient care can potentially prevent the need for hospitalization, or for which early intervention can prevent complications or more severe disease." These hospitalizations can often be reduced by strong outpatient care systems and include conditions such as adult asthma, bacterial pneumonia, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, low birth weight, urinary tract infection and other conditions.

These discharges are also highly correlated with general admissions and reflect the tendency for a population to over use the hospital setting as a site for care.

This measure is new to the 2007 Edition and is weighted as 5.0 percent of the overall score.  It is not adjusted by characteristics of the population served, such as age or health status.

Table 34 displays the 2007 ranks, based on 2005 data (The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinic Practice, Lebanon, N.H.).  The rate of preventable hospitalizations ranges from a low of under 50 discharges per 1,000 Medicare enrollees in Hawaii and Utah to over 100 discharges per 1,000 Medicare enrollees in West Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi. The national average is 78.4 discharges per 1,000 Medicare enrollees.  In the last seven years, the national discharge rate has declined from 82.5 to 78.4 discharges per 1,000 Medicare enrollees.

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