Epidemiology Reports

Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions in New Mexico and the United States, 2016 to 2020

This report analyzes hospitalization rates in New Mexico for acute and chronic ACSC conditions by the five New Mexico health regions for the years 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Disability Adjusted Life Years are summary measures of health across geographies and time that can be used to assess disease burden and health system performance. Disability Adjusted Life Years can be used in conjunction with other information, such as mortality and morbidity rates and health surveys, to arrive at a more complete picture of the burden of disease in New Mexico.

This study is a retrospective analysis of hospital inpatient discharge data from hospitals across the state of New Mexico (both public and private facilities). Multiple studies using large administrative datasets have shown that hospitalizations for septicemia have increased year after year.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also called ObamaCare, was fully implemented on January 1, 2014. The health insurance exchange in New Mexico, BeWellNM, provides the opportunity for enrollment in a health insurance plan. Medicaid, a joint federal and state program, helps with medical costs for those with limited income and resources.

Chronic kidney disease is a general term for a group of disorders that affect the structure and function of the kidney. Severity of the disease is determined by either the presence of kidney damage, the amount of albuminuria, or the decrease in kidney function determined by the glomerular filtration rate. Chronic kidney disease is generally associated with age, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions are conditions for which good outpatient care can potentially prevent the need for a hospitalization or an emergency department visit, or for which early intervention can prevent complications of more severe disease. Acute ACSC include dehydration, urinary tract infections, and bacterial pneumonia.

Drug overdose is a major public health problem in the United States, with death rates having tripled since 1991. Prescription drugs, particularly opioids, account for much of this increase. In 2013, the most recent national data available, New Mexico ranked third in drug overdose death, with an age-adjusted rate of 22.6 deaths per 100,000 population.

In this analysis, a 30-day hospital readmission rate was calculated for homeless patients. A multivariate regression analysis was conducted to determine patient and visit characteristics that increased the odds of a readmission.

In 2013, the Southeast region of New Mexico had a hospitalization rate for psychosis that was more than 80% higher than any other region. This analysis utilized Hospital Inpatient Discharge Data, a dataset maintained by the New Mexico Department of Health, and included inpatient discharges from hospitals located in New Mexico.