Special Report — Inpatient Hospitalizations for Gunshot Wounds
Foreword
The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council has produced a brief report on
inpatient hospitalizations for gunshot wounds occurring in calendar year 1996. The report
includes data on the total number of hospitalizations and the average hospital charges
associated with these wounds for the state and for the county of Philadelphia. The report
also includes hospitalization figures by age, gender, race, and type of insurance
coverage.
There are a few items to keep in mind when looking at these figures:
The figures reflect acute care inpatient hospitalizations only. Those succumbing to
gunshot wounds before being admitted to the hospital (e.g., those who die en route to the
hospital or in the emergency room before being admitted as an inpatient) would not be
included.
The data were reported as submitted to us by the hospital. If a hospital failed to
provide complete information, the number of hospitalizations would be undercounted.
Average
charges are reported. These figures were adjusted to eliminate aberrant
charges (e.g. those that are so high they would skew the data or those that might simply
be in error). It is important to note that these charges are associated with the entire
hospitalization not just treatment associated with the gunshot wound, and they are hospital
charges only (they do not include physician fees, outpatient fees, etc.). Further, while
charges are a standard way of reporting data, they do not reflect the actual cost
of the treatment nor do they reflect the payment that the hospital may have
actually received. It is important to note, too, that some gunshot wound victims go on to
receive medical rehabilitation (e.g., spinal cord injuries). Charges for these services
are not included with these data.
These counts reflect hospitalizations, not persons. For example, if the same
person was admitted to an acute care hospital for a gunshot wound on two separate
occasions in 1996, they were counted twice.
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