Official Site of The State of New Jersey
Work-Related Hospitalizations by Year, New Jersey, 2000 to 2023
Indicator Report Data View Options
Why Is This Important?
Individuals hospitalized with work-related injuries and illnesses have some of the most serious and costly work-related adverse health outcomes. Tracking of these significant adverse health effects can help target prevention programs and activities, and to identify previously recognized settings in which workers may continue to be at high risk. For example, analysis of these data can assist researchers to assess disparities among racial/ethnic groups and among young and older workers.
Definition
Annual number of work-related inpatient hospitalizations for persons age 16 years or older.
Data Notes
Data from 2020 and 2021 may be affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses were closed, workers may have been ill or lost their jobs, many worked from home so may not have been facing the same workplace risks, and people were not seeking medical care for other health conditions during this time. .Data Sources
- Hospital Discharge Data Collection System (NJDDCS), Health Care Quality and Assessment, New Jersey Department of Health
(https://nj.gov/health/healthcarequality/health-care-professionals/njddcs/) - U.S. Census Bureau
(https://www.census.gov/)
How the Measure is Calculated
Numerator:
Number of inpatient hospital discharges with primary payer coded as workers' compensation.Denominator:
Total number of employed persons age 16 years or older for the same calendar year.
Data Issues
Missing data in 2022: Three hospitals in Camden and Gloucester Counties submitted their fourth quarter data after the file closure deadline so their data are missing from the 2022 inpatient and emergency department datasets.Overall Discharge Volume in 2020: Hospital claim volume for the 2020 calendar year was markedly lower (19.9%) than for 2019, mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This reduction was seen in both inpatient discharges (8.2% lower claim volume than 2019) and emergency department visits (27.3% lower claim volume than 2019). This was likely the result of hospital care being redirected to address the care for COVID-19 patients while elective surgeries and other outpatient care services were being postponed.
Caveats specific to 2017 data: NJDOH changed its vendor for hospitalization data collection in 2017 resulting in data loss at some facilities during the transition period. Additionally, The old vendor experienced a global malware incident in June 2017 that possibly resulted in the loss of some data in the system queue at that time.
ICD Coding between 2015 and 2016: The nationwide switch from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM hospital diagnosis coding on October 1, 2015 disrupted trends for some diseases and conditions. Interpret trend data in this report with caution. Also note that New Jersey's data for October through December, 2015 was recoded to ICD-9-CM so that entire year of data was coded the same way.