This report presents information on Los Angeles county residents in 1996 and 1997 who were hospitalized for conditions known as Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions (ACSCs). ACSCs are conditions for which most hospital admissions could be prevented if patients received adequate access to ambulatory care services. Thus, ACSCs represent one method of defining potentially avoidable hospitalizations. ACSCs were originally developed by Billings et al. for a study of hospital admissions in New York City. They have subsequently been used by other researchers to demonstrate the impact of inadequate access to ambulatory care services on various populations, including children and seniors.

This report presents data on the number of hospital admissions, admission rates per 100,000 population, total days of inpatient care, and total hospital charges for 24 ACSCs among residents of Los Angeles County during 1996 and 1997. The next section describes the data sources and assumptions employed in analyzing the data, followed by the results and a discussion of implications for Los Angeles County.