Hospital Discharge Rates to Help Monitor New Hampshire Health Insurance

The Rates for 2001, 2002, and 2003

Each calendar quarter more than 1,400 inpatient discharges and more than 20,000 outpatient discharges are for self-pay patients. Table 1 displays the counts of all discharges and self-pay discharges for each calendar quarter of 2001, 2002, and 2003, as now available from the Bureau of Health Care Research.

Table 1: Hospital discharges by calendar quarter

Quarter	Inpatient Discharges			Outpatient Discharges
	Self-Pay	Total	Percent	Self-Pay	Total	Percent
2001-Q1	1,416	29,900	4.74%	21,436	152,673	14.04%
2001-Q2	1,372	29,883	4.59%	22,001	156,840	14.03%
2001-Q3	1,504	29,825	5.04%	24,505	169,235	14.48%
2001-Q4	1,442	29,411	4.90%	21,729	155,418	13.98%
2002-Q1	1,456	29,707	4.90%	22,207	157,941	14.06%
2002-Q2	1,435	29,532	4.86%	22,825	161,594	14.12%
2002-Q3	1,628	29,938	5.44%	26,052	177,926	14.64%
2002-Q4	1,567	29,219	5.36%	23,367	160,114	14.59%
2003-Q1	1,551	29,776	5.21%	Not yet available
2003-Q2	1,596	30,545	5.23%
2003-Q3	1,690	30,406	5.56%
2003-Q4	1,663	30,247	5.50%
2004-Q1	Not yet available
2004-Q2
2004-Q3
2004-Q4
2005-Q1

From the first quarter of 2001 to the fourth quarter of 2003, these data show a slight increase in the percentage of inpatient discharges that are to self-pay patients, from 4.7 percent in the January-March quarter of 2001 to 5.5 percent in the October-December quarter of 2003.

One disadvantage of the UHDD is that the data typically have been made available only after a full year of discharge records are submitted and cleaned of any errors. The state's hospitals submit their UHDD discharge data quarterly to the Maine Health Information Center. The Center releases six months of compiled data to the Bureau about nine months after the end of the two quarters involved. Typically, this process takes nearly one year to complete from the close of the last quarter of the data year. For example, near the end of 2004, the most recent measure available was for the fourth quarter of 2002.