Term: Hospital Location

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Glossary Definition

Last Updated: 2013-10-04

Definition:

In the deliverable Who is in our Hospitals ... and Why? by Fransoo et al. (2013), the term "hospital location" is used to define where health region/RHA residents went for hospitalizations. The four different categories included:

(i) percentage of hospitalizations in patient's RHA,
(ii) percentage of hospitalizations in another RHA,
(iii) percentage of hospitalizations in a Winnipeg hospital, and
(iv) percentage of hospitalizations outside of Manitoba.

Only hospitalizations attributed to Manitoba residents were counted.

NOTE: The above definition is the same definition used for the term Location of Hospitalization from the deliverable Profile of Metis Health Status and Healthcare Utilization in Manitoba: A Population-Based Study by Martens et al. (2010).

In the deliverable The 2013 RHA Indicators Atlas by Fransoo et al. (2013), they used the same definition above. For analysis, the postal code information from the hospital abstract collected at time of hospitalization was used to assign residents to RHAs rather than sourced from the Manitoba Health Insurance Registry. The Registry is usually the "gold standard", but does not always capture all moves within the province if they are not reported and this discrepancy can be more noticeable when measuring indicators in less populated regions.

In Frohlich et al. (2001), hospital locations were determined using Statistics Canada's Postal Code Conversion File (PCCF) which links the hospital postal codes to Statistics Canada's standard geographical areas (census divisions, census sub-divisions, etc.) and to latitude / longitude coordinates. While postal codes for urban hospitals are sufficiently dense to allow accurate coding of these hospital locations, most rural postal codes are quite large, making it very difficult to locate rural hospitals. In these cases the location of the rural post office was always selected because the hospital was more likely to be located in town (along with the post office) rather than in outlying areas served by the post office.

Related concepts 

• Distance to Hospital - A Method to Calculate
• Health Indicators: Indicators of Health Status and Healthcare Use

Related terms 

• Distance to Hospital
• Hospital Location: Where RHA Residents Were Hospitalized - Days
• Hospital Location: Where RHA Residents Were Hospitalized - Hospitalizations
• Location of Hospitalization
• Personal Care Home (PCH) Location
• Postal Code Conversion Files (PCCF)

References 

• Fransoo R, Martens P, The Need to Know Team, Prior H, Burchill C, Koseva I, Bailly A, Allegro E. The 2013 RHA Indicators Atlas. Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, 2013. [Report] [Summary] [Additional Materials] (View)
• Fransoo R, Martens P, The Need to Know Team, Prior H, Burchill C, Koseva I, Rajotte L. Who is in our Hospitals.and why? Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, 2013. [Report] [Summary] [Additional Materials] (View)
• Frohlich N, Fransoo R, Roos NP. Indicators of Health Status and Health Service Use for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, 2001. [Report] [Summary] (View)
• Martens PJ, Bartlett J, Burland E, Prior H, Burchill C, Huq S, Romphf L, Sanguins J, Carter S, Bailly A. Profile of Metis Health Status and Healthcare Utilization in Manitoba: A Population-Based Study. Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, 2010. [Report] [Summary] [Updates and Errata] [Additional Materials] (View)
• Ng E, Wilkins R, Perras A. How far is it to the nearest hospital? Calculating distances using the Statistics Canada Postal Code Conversion File. Health Rep 1993;5(2):179-188. [Abstract] (View)