Cardiovascular Health Indicator
Measure: Potentially Preventable Amputation Hospitalizations

Analysis

As shown in Table 1 and Chart 1, the hospitalization rate for cardiovascular-disease related lower-extremity amputations has declined from their highest levels in 2006 and 2007. In recent years, the rate has been steady, but it is higher than the recent lowest rate recorded in 2016. Over this 15-year time period, the total number of hospitalizations has remained in a fairly narrow range, from 498 at the low end to 665 at the high end.

Table 1: Total Cardiovascular Disease-related Lower Extremity Amputation Hospitalizations and Hospitalization Rate for Adult Minnesotans, 2006-2020

Chart 1: Total Hospitalization Rate for Cardiovascular Disease-related Lower Extremity Amputations for Adult Minnesotans, 2006-2020

Other Resources

• Potentially Preventable Health Care Events in Minnesota (PDF)
  This recent report from the Health Economics Program at the Minnesota Department of Health on at the number and cost of potentially preventable emergency department, hospitalization, and rehospitalization events in Minnesota. It has more discussion of what potentially preventable events are and how they may be prevented. Because it also looks at emergency department data, the report gives a fuller picture of how people interact with health care providers and may help to interpret the data shown here.

  Note: this report uses different metrics to define potentially preventable hospitalizations which are different from the specifications used for this indicator.



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Data Source

The data were obtained through the Minnesota Hospital Discharge Dataset, also known as the Minnesota Hospital Uniform Billing (UB) Claims Data, provided to the Health Economics Program at the Minnesota Department of Health by the Minnesota Hospital Association. The dataset captures hospitalizations for Minnesota residents and comes from Minnesota hospitals (except for Federal Hospitals owned by the Veterans Administration or the Indian Health Service) or other states that share data with the state of Minnesota (including the bordering states of Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota; hospitalizations that occur in Wisconsin for Minnesota residents are not included/shared). Annual population estimates were obtained through the U.S. Census Bureau in collaboration with the National Center for Health Statistics.

Measure Definition

Definitions for this indicator is available through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).The lower-extremity amputation measure was modified from the AHRQ definition by replacing diabetes diagnosis codes with circulatory disease diagnoses (ICD-9: 390 -459 through September 30, 2015 and ICD-10: I00-I99). Adult measures were age-adjusted to the U.S. 2000 adult standard population weights.

The change from ICD-9 to ICD-10 introduces some uncertainty in the trend from 2014 through 2016, because changes in coding may lead to differences in classification of conditions before and after the transition.