Colorado Hospital Utilization Data

The Colorado Hospital Association (CHA) has made available the following hospital utilization data in an effort to provide consumers, health care organizations and other interested parties with timely and comparative hospital metrics. The data also represents Colorado hospitals’ commitment to increasing transparency in health care.

The information comes from CHA’s DATABANK, an online database program that collects self-reported hospital utilization and financial data from health care facilities on a monthly basis. Please note that not all CHA member hospitals currently utilize DATABANK. This list includes general/acute care hospitals in Colorado and does not include specialty facilities.

The data below is for the calendar year 2012 and is defined as follows:

Licensed Beds: Refers to the maximum number of beds that a licensure agency, such as the state or other governing body, allows a hospital or health facility to operate at any given time. These numbers are reported by hospitals every month. This figure is an average for the reporting period.

Total Discharges: An inpatient discharge is the formal release of a patient (includes patients admitted and discharged the same day) and the termination of the hospital lodging. For the DATABANK Program, a mother and her newborn baby count as one discharge if they are discharged at the same time. When a baby remains at the hospital beyond the mother’s discharge (a.k.a. a “boarder baby”), one discharge is counted when the mother is released and another discharge is counted when the baby is released. If a patient is discharged from an acute care unit and transferred to another care setting, such as a swing bed, there would be a count for acute discharge and another discharge from swing bed when that occurs. Total discharges include acute care, swing bed¹, sub-acute/long-term care and distinct-part unit².

Patient Days: A patient day is a unit of measure that represents lodging provided and services rendered to inpatients between the census-taking hours (usually at midnight) of two successive days. A patient formally admitted to a hospital who is discharged or dies on the same day is counted as one patient day, regardless of the number of hours the patient occupies a hospital bed. This includes acute care, swing bed, sub-acute/long-term care and distinct-part unit. Newborn patient days are excluded.

Births: The sum of the number of live births in the hospital during the reporting period, including cesarean deliveries. Fetal deaths and infants transferred from other facilities are excluded.

Emergency Department Visits: The total number of patients seen in an emergency unit who are not later admitted as inpatients.

Total Outpatient Visits: Total number of outpatient visits reported during the reporting period, including emergency room visits, ambulatory surgery visits, observation visits, home health visits and all other visit types.

¹ Swing-beds: Refers to an agreement under the Social Security Act that permits certain small, rural hospitals to enter into a “swing bed agreement,” under which hospitals can use its beds, as needed, to provide either acute- or Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF)-level care.

² Distinct-Part Unit: A portion of an institution or institutional complex that is certified to provide Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) or Nursing Facility (NF) services. A distinct part must be physically distinguishable from the larger institution and fiscally separate for cost reporting purposes.