Quality of Care: Chronic Conditions Almanac — 2024 Edition

Over the last few decades, the measurement and reporting of health care quality outcomes has grown significantly. As health care evolves, it is important to continue to monitor and report on the quality of care delivered to patients in California and across the US. This is part of a series of measures CHCF is publishing on the quality of care in our state. Topics range from maternal to end-of-life care and include measures on behavioral health, chronic conditions, and providers.

This set of quality measures focuses on a range of chronic conditions, including diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease, and includes data by race/ethnicity, payer, and county.

Many adults in California have been diagnosed with chronic conditions

Chronic conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, are the leading cause of illness, disability, and death in the United States.¹ In 2022, more than one in four adults in California were obese or had high blood pressure. Prevalence of chronic conditions varied by race/ethnicity.

Rates for preventable chronic care hospitalizations have fluctuated since 2016

In 2022, based on a composite measure of hospital admission rates for eight chronic care conditions, 650 hospitalizations per 100,000 California adults were potentially preventable through effective chronic care management and access to high-quality primary care. The preventable chronic conditions hospitalization rate has fluctuated since 2016.

Mortality rates for four leading cancers varied by race/ethnicity

American Indian and Alaska Native Californians experienced mortality rates for lung and colorectal cancer, and for breast cancer among women, more than two times higher than the state’s overall rate. The prostate cancer mortality rate for Black men was more than two times higher than the overall rate in California.

The companion Excel data file is available for download below. These materials are part of CHCF’s California Health Care Almanac, an online clearinghouse for key data and analyses describing the state’s health care landscape. To see past editions of this almanac, contact us.

Notes

1. “About Chronic Diseases,” US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 15, 2024. ↩︎