Data from Medicare records of more than 28 million people each year between 2000 and 2006 in the 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands were used to create a county-level report on hospitalizations because of heart disease.
The CDC’s “Atlas of Heart Disease Hospitalizations Among Medicare Beneficiaries” shows that the highest hospitalization rates occur among blacks compared to other racial and ethnic groups and rates were highest in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, Texas and Oklahoma.
For more county-level health data, be sure to take a look at the County Health Rankings recently released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin.
