Inpatient care is the care of patients whose condition requires admission to a hospital (see Wikipedia). Alberta’s Interactive Health Data Application (IHDA) provides data on inpatient care costs from 2006/07 to 2009/10 organized by Case Mix Groups. We’ve downloaded this data and created the following visualization to help you see how Alberta inpatient care costs were distributed and to compare how they’ve grown over the 2006/07 to 2009/10 fiscal years. (Fiscal years end on Mar. 31 in Alberta.)

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What is a Case Mix Group (CMG+)?

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), CMG+ is a methodology “designed to aggregate acute care inpatients with similar clinical and resource-utilization characteristics.” Patients are assigned to major clinical categories (listed on the right in the visualization) and then to sub-categories within the major categories based on their diagnosis and the intervention required. The methodology allows hospitals to track and predict patient length of stay and resource costs.

What does the chart show?

The chart at the top of the visualization shows Total Cost, Total Costed Stays, and Average Cost by CMG+ category for each fiscal year from 2006/07 to 2009/10. We’ve used the end year to represent each fiscal year (e.g., the 2006/07 fiscal year is labelled 2007).

How can I drill down to see the detailed data for one of the major clinical categories?

Select the category from the list on the right. You should see a “plus” icon by the category labels in both the chart and the table. Clicking on these icons will drill down to the CMG+ code level.

What does CAGR stand for in the table?

Compound annual growth rate. (See Wikipedia)

Can I sort the data in the table?

Hover over the column headings until you see a sort icon. Click on the icon to change the sort order.