A 2006 report by Children's Hospital, shows that only 17% of its inpatients come from Seattle.
Insight. Take a closer at the King County figures. Does the distribution of patients (Seattle vs. the rest of King County) match the actual distribution of kids in the county? If you run the numbers, Seattle kids appear as Children's inpatients 50% more often than they should based on population distribution alone. A host of things might contribute to this pattern, but having a single, Seattle location for inpatient care must surely play a role. The numbers suggest that having a single inpatient site reduces the accessibility of care in King County.
Analysis Explained. According to this chart, 45% of all inpatients come from King County. According to a report by New Futures, 23.9% of King County’s kids live in Seattle. Thus, you would expect that 11% of all of Children’s inpatients would be Seattleites (11 is 23.9 percent of 45). Yet 17% of all patients come from Seattle. This suggests that Seattle kids are much more likely to get care at Children’s than other King County kids. In fact, Seattle kids are represented among Children’s inpatient population at a rate more than 50% greater than you would expect if all kids in King County had equal access to care at Children’s Hospital.
