Abstract
Epidemiology of Indigent Psychiatric Hospitalizations in California Track: Health and Human Services Author(s): Jim Banta County-level mental health departments in California are responsible for the psychiatric care of Medi-Cal eligible persons and those who are indigent. A significant uninsured caseload may prove draining to these departments and to hospitals mandated to provide emergency services, resulting in limited access. A GIS-based approach was implemented to determine areas having a greater proportion of indigent care. Based on 1999-2003 ZIP Code level hospital data for psychiatric discharges, an adaptive kernel estimation method was used to create smoothed maps. These maps reveal a more stable view of the spatial variation in the proportion of indigent discharges compared to all psychiatric discharges. Synthetic estimation techniques were also applied to U.S. census data to estimate the proportion of severe mental illness among households at less than 200 percent poverty level compared to estimated mental illness among all households. Visually comparing these two sets of maps suggests areas of potential disparities. Jim Banta Loma Linda University Health Administration 24951 North Circle Drive Loma Linda , CA 92350 US Phone: (909) 558-7753 E-mail: jbanta@llu.edu |
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