Alabama Hospitals

Introduction

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

This site displays data on Alabama hospitals. Our data are based on data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In the interactive map and table, CCN refers to the CMS Certification Number, a number that uniquely identifies the hospital in CMS databases. Our data have been enhanced by adding attributes related to urban/rural classification and aggregation based on counties and our own Primary Care Service Areas (PCSAs).

Hospitals can be classified into several categories based on the type of service and the type of patient:

• Acute Care Hospitals are hospitals that provides inpatient medical care and other related services for surgery, acute medical conditions or injuries (usually for a short term illness or condition).
• Critical Access Hospitals are rural hospitals that meet certain eligibility requirements established by CMS: A CAH must have 25 or fewer acute care inpatient beds, be located more than 35 miles from another hospital, maintain an annual average length of stay of 96 hours or less for acute care patients, and provide 24/7 emergency care services.
• Rural Emergency Hospitals are rural hospitals that provide 24/7 emergency care services that last, on average, less than 24 hours. An REH may provide outpatient services as well. Often, rural emergency hospitals are former critical access hospitals that could not remain financially viable.
• Specialty Hospitals provide specialized services or services to special groups of patients:
  • Psychiatric Hospitals are hospitals primarily engaged in providing psychiatric services for the diagnosis and treatment of mentally ill persons.
  • Children's Hospitals are hospitals with inpatients predominantly age 18 or younger.
  • Long-Term Care Hospitals are acute care hospitals that focus on patients who, on average, stay more than 25 days. LTC hospitals specialize in treating patients who may have more than one serious condition, but who may improve with time and care, and return home.

Hospitals are also classified by ownership:

• Government Hospitals (or public hospitals) may be administerd by the federal government, a state government, a local governement, or by a hospital district or authority. A government hospital is fully funded by the government and operates solely off the money that is collected from taxpayers to fund healthcare initiatives.
• Non-Profit Hospitals are private (non-government) hospitals that do not make profits for the owners of the hospital from the funds collected for patient services. The owners of non-profit hospitals are often a charitable organization or non-profit corporations. Fees for service above the cost of service are reinvested in the hospital.
• For-Profit hospitals are proprietary hospitals typically run by corporations that are operated for profit.

The CMS Five-Star Rating for hospitals is based on five criteria:

1. Mortality
2. Safety of Care
3. Readmission
4. Patient Experience
5. Timely & Effective Care

Primary Care Service Areas

Primary Care Service Areas (PCSAs) have been defined by the Office of Family Health, Education, and Research at the UAB School of Medicine Huntsville Regional Medical Campus. Each PCSA is centered at a community with a cluster of medical resources (often including a general admissions hospital). PCSAs are based on the Alabama road network and each corresponds to a drive time of 30 minutes or less from the center. The PCSAs partition the state, like counties, but are more rational in terms of the delivery of healthcare services. Each PCSA is classified with the NCHS scheme discussed above, based on the classification of the county that contains the centroid.

NCHS Scheme

Of particular importance for healthcare is the urban-rural classification scheme developed by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This scheme is based on Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs), and so applies to counties, but is enhanced and adapted specifically for health statistics. It has four urban levels and two rural levels (ordered from most urban to most rural):

1. Large Central Metro
2. Large Fringe Metro
3. Medium Metro
4. Small Metro
5. Micropolitan
6. Noncore

The first five are associated with CBSAs. The last level, Noncore is not associated with a CBSA, hence the name. So a Noncore county could be considered completely rural. The NCHS classification has been extended to each PCSA by using the classification of the county that contains the centroid.

User Interface

Our data are displayed in the form of interactive maps and interactive tables. The maps generally have point or area layers that can be added or removed with the layer control on the map. The user can zoom in and out of a map and move about in the usual way. Zooming in reveals additional features such as small towns and then streets and roads. A click on the home button returns the map to its origional location and scale. The zoom to area button allows the user to zoom to a selected rectangular area of the map. Clicking on an object in a layer shows summary data for that object.

The interactive tables can be sorted by any field, by clicking on the header for that field. The buttons at the top allow the table data to be copied to the clipboard, in tab-separated text format, printed, or downloaded in various formats (tab-separated text, Excel, or PDF). With the search bar, the table can be filtered according to a text string.

In the interactive tables that display geographic point or area data, you can click on a row to select an object and see the object highlighted in the map. You can select as many rows as you wish. Click on a selected row again to de-select and remove the highlight.

Limitations

The information and data presented in this project are provided as a service to the educational and healthcare communities. Although care was taken in gathering the data at the time of posting, no warranties are expressed or implied as to the correctness or usefulness of the material. Moreover, the project should be viewed as a snapshot in time. Inevitably, the further from the time of posting the less accurate the data will be.