Hospitalizations in Chelan/Douglas Counties--Whitney Herrick

Whitney Herrick

I interviewed with Dr. Crawford from my hometown, Wenatchee, Washington. He is a pediatrician but had information for me on some statistics within the Chelan and Douglas Counties within Wenatchee. I focused on the top reasons for hospitalization and other health issues in Chelan/Douglas.

1.Unintentional Injury is the number one reason for hospitalization in my hometown. These injuries can include unintentional falls, unintentional poisonings, motor vehicle accidents, etc. In Wenatchee specifically there are numerous car and motorcycle incidents which require hospitalization. More unique to our town are work-related injuries. Wenatchee is an agricultural community with many orchards and a large population of migrant workers. Injuries related to this include falling off ladders while picking fruit, accidents involving a tractor or forklift, and crushing injuries with fruit bins. These incidents often require hospitalization as they can result in serious and life-threatening injuries. Hospitalization for this has risen by 45% since 2000.

2. Heart Disease is another cause for hospitalization. We have interesting trends here because Wenatchee has high populations of elderly people, who are more likely to have heart disease. On the other hand, we also have high populations of Hispanics, who are 20% less likely to have heart disease than other non-Hispanic adults. Outside of those two groups, the youth and younger adults live very active lifestyles and eat healthier foods, as is the trend in Wenatchee (and Washington for that matter). This is helping them to prevent heart disease, but does not make up for the high amounts of older people who are being hospitalized for such. Fortunately, heart disease has declined by 22% since 2000.

3. Respiratory Disease can include simpler things like the common cold or pneumonia. It can also include pulmonary embolisms and lung cancer. In Chelan/Douglas counties, it accounted for 2.9% of hospitalizations, as opposed to the 7.8% for heart disease. Respiratory disease has declined by 64% since 2000. Similar to the heart disease issues, we do have a lot of older adults who have less healthy practices than those of the younger generation there, including their high cigarette usage. This contributes to the hospitalization quite a bit, along with a surprising amount of pneumonia cases.

4. Digestive Disease was also a high cause for hospitalization. This has such a wide scope of diseases, though, that I was surprised it wasn’t higher. Of the most common were things like Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Colitis. Digestive system disease counted for 7.4% of hospitalizations in Chelan/Douglas. There has also been a decline by 13% since 2000.

The last trend is one that has been on the rise just in the last two to three years, and therefore has less data but Dr. Crawford mentioned its  concerning increase in our town.

5. Teen Suicide, whether attempted or successful, is a cause for hospitalization that has increased a considerable amount in the last few years. There have been a higher amount of attempted suicides than the public is aware of, but according to Dr. Crawford, it is an issue we need to watch out for. Our high school (including recent graduates) has suffered two suicides just in the last few months. In the past 5 years there have been many more. This concern is one more closely related to those social determinants of health and have to watch for among the teens in our area.