Missouri Health

In 2008, 79.7 million people enrolled in state donor registries, a 15 percent increase from 2007.

In 2008, the average premium for family health care coverage in Missouri was $13,188.

Missouri is currently tied with Alabama for the third lowest immunization rate for H1N1 influenza.

In 2007, 23.6 million Americans — 7.8 percent of the population — had diabetes. In addition, 1.6 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in people 20 years or older in 2007.

During 2009, Missouri hospitals added 1,100 new jobs; at the same time, 62,600 were lost statewide.

In 2008, 28.5 percent of Missourians had a body mass index that exceed 30 — a criteria for determining obesity.

In 2009, an estimated 46 million Americans were without insurance.

Nationally, an estimated $475.3 billion was spent in 2009 on cardiovascular diseases and stroke care.

Although the majority of people enrolled in Missouri’s Medicaid program are families and children, the majority of expenditures pay for services to aged, blind, and disabled Missourians.

In the U.S., the annual economic, indirect cost of mental illnesses is estimated to be $79 billion. Most of that amount—approximately $63 billion—reflects the loss of productivity as a result of illnesses.

In 2007, the average retail cost of a prescription drug before a co-pay was $55.93.

National spending on health care in 2007 was $2.2 trillion.

Missouri holds the dubious distinction of 11th fattest state in the nation, according to the CDC’s data.

One primary care physician working in a rural area generates $1.2 million in annual revenue and creates 23 jobs.

To be eligible for MO HealthNet, a parent must earn no more than 19 percent of the federal poverty level — approximately $4,900 for a family of five.

The $847.2 million that hospitals provide the state through the Federal Reimbursement Allowance is a major source of state revenue, surpassing all but the two largest sources of general revenue — the state individual income tax and the sales and use tax.

Missouri is one of 27 states with laws requiring public reporting of health care-associated infection rates. Missouri’s law, which was adopted in 2004, was one of the first in the nation.

Missouri’s 123 full-service acute care hospitals average 54,023 emergency department visits each week.

More people die from lung cancer than any other type of cancer. Missouri ranks 12th in the nation for lung cancer deaths.

Missouri’s hospitals employ the equivalent of 114,000 full-time workers.

Nationally, nearly 22 million schools days are lost each year to the common cold.

The multiplied impact of Missouri hospitals’ payroll, benefits and capital investment in 2008 was $16.2 billion.

At 17 cents per pack, Missouri has the lowest tobacco tax in the nation.

The costs related to autism in the United States are $60 billion annually, with 60 percent of the expense directed to adult services.

Benzene is a known cause of acute myeloid leukemia, and cigarette smoke is a major source of benzene exposure. Among U.S. smokers, 90 percent of benzene exposures come from cigarettes.

Although cancer incidence and deaths are falling, 41 out of every 100 Americans “will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from cancers.”

Half of all long-term smokers will die a tobacco-related death.

Approximately 20 million Americans suffer from asthma. Asthma is estimated to cost $18.3 billion, including $10.1 billion in direct costs for medicines and health care services and $8.2 billion in indirect costs, such as lost productivity because of missed days at school or work.

In 2003, 45.4 percent of all Missouri births were covered by the state’s Medicaid program.

If each American cut salt intake by one teaspoon (three grams) a day, there would be 120,000 fewer strokes, 99,000 fewer heart attacks and 92,000 fewer deaths in the next year.

More than 1,300 Missourians are currently on the state’s organ donation transplant list.

Don’t forget the sunscreen! Of the more than 2 million cases of nonmelanoma skin cancer diagnosed yearly in the United States, most are considered to be sun-related.

Pesticide levels in carpet dust in the homes of agricultural workers and nonfarming families can be 10- to 200-fold higher than levels in the air outside the same home, increasing exposure risk to children who crawl and play directly on the carpet.

There is a strong correlation between diabetes and obesity. In 2006, nearly 88 percent of Missourians who self-reported physician-diagnosed diabetes were overweight or obese — 32.7 percent were overweight and 55.3 percent were obese.

Men die at higher rates than women for the top 10 causes of death — including cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Yet, a recent survey found that one in four men hadn’t seen a doctor in the previous year, and one in three didn’t even have a regular physician.

In the last decade alone, family premium costs in Missouri increased by 92 percent.

Our brain is 75 percent water, which is why even mild dehydration causes headaches.

According to 2005 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the top five principle reasons for emergency department visits are stomach and abdominal pain, cramps and spasms; chest pain and related symptoms; fever; headache, pain in head; and back symptoms.

Each year in the United States, more than 160 million prescriptions are written for antibiotics. Humans consume 235 million doses of antibiotics annually. It is estimated that 20 to 50 percent of that use is unnecessary.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 729,000 Missourians – 13 percent of the state – were uninsured in 2007 before the economic recession. The vast majority of uninsured Missourians, 72 percent, are in a family with at least one full-time worker.

Untreated sleep apnea can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, obesity and diabetes.

Lung cancer kills more people than any other cancer. Each year, nearly 200,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States. And, nearly 150,000 Americans die from the disease each year.

Missouri students are at an equal or greater risk of having an unintended pregnancy or contracting an STD compared to their peers in other states, according to a 2007 survey.

Eat your fruits and veggies! Only 20.2 percent of Missourians get all of their daily fruit and vegetable requirements as recommended by the Food and Drug Administration.

A little is better than none! Losing weight, even a mere 5 to 7 percent weight loss, can cut your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 58 percent.

Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body. If you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief.

The average cost of developing and bringing a new prescription drug to market is $802 million. It usually takes between 10 and 15 years to develop and bring a new medication to market.

In the past 12 months, 14 percent of adults needed to see a doctor but did not because of the cost.

Be careful with those sparklers! An estimated 9,800 people were treated for fireworks related injuries at U.S. hospital emergency rooms in 2007.

Health care professionals advised 72 percent of current smokers to quit smoking. This is nearly a 9 percent increase from four years ago.

Get moving! More than 25 percent of Missourians did not participate in a leisurely physical activity or exercise in the past month.

The number one cause of death among Missourians is heart disease.

You should drink eight glasses of fluid each day. Branch out from water because the eight glasses can include juice, tea, milk or even coffee. If you’re thirsty, drink some water!

Almost one-third of the 46 million uninsured in the United States are 19 to 29 – the age group that is the most likely to be without coverage because so many work in part-time or entry-level jobs.

Missouri ranks No. 5 on a list of the highest percentage of adult smokers — a little more than 24 percent of Missouri adults smoke.

Of all 50 states, Missouri has the lowest state funding for public health per capita.

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, U.S. cigarettes contain three times as much of a potent carcinogen as foreign brands.

A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from a lack of food. Death will occur after about 10 days without sleep while starvation takes a few weeks.

Health care spending in the United States surpassed $2.3 trillion in 2008, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990 and more than eight times the $253 billion spent in 1980.

Approximately 3.4 million Americans age 40 and older are blind or visually impaired. These numbers are expected to double in the next three decades.

In summer, allergy culprits can be outdoor molds and pollen from grass and trees. In late summer, ragweed pollens can be especially high and aggravate allergies for several weeks.

More than 126 million nonsmokers in the United States are exposed to secondhand smoke in homes, vehicles, workplaces and public places.

The most common type of cancer in the Unites States is lung cancer, with more than 222,000 new cases expected this year.

Nearly 90 percent of nonmelanoma skin cancers are associated with exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

Today is the 45th anniversary of the Medicare program. President Harry S Truman and First Lady Bess Truman were the first Medicare card holders. Their cards were presented by President Lyndon Johnson.

Missouri is one of nine states with an obesity rate of more than 30 percent of the adult population.

Minorities make up more than half of organ donation waiting lists (53.6 percent), but they comprise less than half of organ transplants performed (38.7 percent).

The use of indoor tanning beds increases the risk of melanoma, depending on the type of machine and the length of time a person tans. Individuals who tanned indoors had a 74 percent increased risk of melanoma.

Health care reform could prove a boon for the medical real estate business. For every health care patient, about 1.9 square feet of medical space is required.

Before the introduction of the measles vaccine, an estimated 3–4 million people in the United States were infected each year. In 2009, only 71 cases were reported.

Fractures are the fourth most common type of injury suffered by U.S. high school athletes. Among patients who had fractures, 95 percent needed expensive diagnostic imaging (X-rays, MRIs and CT scans), and 16 percent needed surgery.

Each year, nearly 6,000 children in the United States experience backpack-related injuries.

Preschoolers are the fastest-growing market for antidepressants. At least 4 percent of preschoolers – more than 1 million — are clinically depressed.

The rate of overweight children in Missouri is .8 percent higher than the national average. The adult overweight/obesity rate is 1.8 percent higher than the national average.

According to the National Institutes of Health, as many as 7.5 million Americans — approximately 2.2 percent of the population — have psoriasis.

Missourians take nearly 20 million bicycle trips each year.

Generic drugs account for nearly two-thirds of prescriptions filled in the United States but less than 13 percent of costs.

September is Baby Safety Month. Children between the ages of 1 and 4 have the highest rate of unintentional nonfatal home injury, compared with all other childhood age groups.

As one of the largest employers in 2008, health care provided 14.3 million jobs for wage and salary workers. Nearly 40 percent were in hospitals.

September is Cholesterol Education Month. An estimated 102.2 million adults in the United States have blood cholesterol values of 200 mg/dL and higher. Of these individuals, 35.7 million have levels of 240 or higher. In adults, total cholesterol levels of 240 mg/dL or higher are considered high risk while levels from 200 to 239 mg/dL are considered borderline-high risk.

Sept. 5-11 is Suicide Prevention Week. In the United States alone, a person dies by suicide every 16 minutes. Make a difference … “Take 5 To Save Lives.”

Ten of the 20 fastest growing occupations are health care related.

Snoring has a tendency to worsen with age. Forty-five percent of adults snore occasionally while 25 percent are considered habitual snorers.

September is Leukemia, Lymphoma and Myeloma Awareness Month. Every four minutes, one person is diagnosed with a blood cancer.

There are 5.3 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease. Every 70 seconds, someone in America develops Alzheimer’s disease.

September is Sports Eye Health and Safety Awareness Month. According to the National Eye Institute, eye injuries are the leading cause of blindness in school-aged children. Most of those injuries are sports-related. Every 13 minutes, an emergency room in the United States treats a sports-related eye injury, many of them among children.

Laughing lowers stress hormones and strengthens the immune system by releasing health-enhancing hormones.

Sept. 19-25 is Prostate Cancer Awareness Week. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, behind only lung cancer.

This week is Child Passenger Safety Week. From 1975 through 2008, an estimated 8,959 lives were saved by child restraints.

One in three adults age 65 and older falls each year. In 2008, emergency departments treated 2.1 million nonfatal fall injuries among older adults; more than 559,000 of these patients were hospitalized.

The average child in the United States between the ages of 8-18 spends more than 10 1/2 hours a day using some type of entertainment media (screen time), including watching TV, listening to music, playing video games and surfing the Web.

As of 2008, only 30 percent of women 18 years and older engaged in leisure-time physical activity on a regular basis.

In the United States, an estimated 24.8 million men (23.1 percent) and 21.1 million women (18.3 percent) are smokers. They are at higher risk for having a heart attack or stroke.

October 3-9 is Mental Illness Awareness Week. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

Binaural (two-eared) hearing helps us localize sounds, assists us in noisy settings and provides natural sound quality. Most people with hearing loss in both ears can understand better with two hearing aids than with one.

More than 10 million people in America have bipolar disorder.

Prescription drugs account for the second most commonly abused category of drugs, behind marijuana.

An estimated 50 million Americans have arthritis.

Within the past two years, 68 percent of women age 40 and older have had a mammogram.

In the United States, there are 2,909,357 licensed registered nurses. Only 5.8 percent of those R.N.s are men.

Nearly 207,090 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. An estimated 39,840 women will die from breast cancer in 2010.

In 2008, there were 132,200 uninsured children in Missouri.

This week, schools nationwide will observe National Red Ribbon Week. Last year, 900,000 fewer teenagers used illicit drugs than a decade earlier.

A majority of U.S. adults now wish to be organ or tissue donors — 56 percent versus 50 percent in 2009.

Children are four times more likely to be hit by a car on Halloween than any other night of the year. Have a safe Halloween with your little witches and goblins.

More than 795,000 strokes occur annually in the United States, with an estimated cost of more than $73 billion.

It is estimated that health promotion worksite programs result in overall, benefit-to-cost ratios of $3.48 in reduced health care costs and $5.82 in lower absenteeism costs per dollar invested.

Diabetes affects nearly 25 million Americans and costs Americans $83 billion a year in hospital fees — 23 percent of total hospital spending.

Sinusitis affects 37 million people each year, making it one of the most common health problems in the United States.

In 2010, it is estimated that 222,520 people will be diagnosed with lung cancer, and 157,300 people will die from lung cancer.

Individuals 65 and older numbered 39.6 million in 2009 — 12.9 percent of the U.S. population. By 2030, there will be about 72.1 million seniors, more than twice their number in 2000.

The number of hospital admissions among Americans ages 45 and older for medication and drug-related conditions doubled between 1997 and 2008. Medicare and Medicaid were responsible for 57 percent of the $1.1 billion cost to hospitals for treating these patients.

Premature birth – birth before 37 weeks gestation – affects more than 543,000 babies each year in the United States and is the leading cause of newborn death.

Each year about 1.3 million smokers quit. Since 1965, more than 40 percent of all adults who have ever smoked have quit.

Hospitals’ purchases of goods and services from other businesses support one of every 10 jobs in the United States and $1.9 trillion of economic activity.

Don’t blame the turkey! The tryptophan in turkey probably isn’t the cause of after-dinner drowsiness. Rather, Thanksgiving sleepiness is more likely caused by a large carbohydrate-packed meal. Drinking alcohol and relaxing on the couch watching football helps the drowsiness along, too.

Even though more women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and more men with prostate cancer, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths for both men and women.

Hospitalizations for eating disorders jumped by 119 percent between 1999 and 2006 for kids younger than 12.

Every year, the flu costs businesses approximately $10.4 billion in direct costs for hospitalizations and outpatient visits for adults.

Health insurance premiums for businesses and their employees increased 41 percent across states from 2003 to 2009 while per-person deductibles jumped 77 percent.

It’s estimated that more than 200,000 people in the United States are hospitalized from flu-related complications on average each flu season, including 20,000 children younger than 5.

The 2010 America’s Health Rankings^® lists Missouri 39th among the states for the health and care of its residents.

The economic burden of cigarette use includes more than $193 billion annually in health care costs and loss of productivity.

Missouri is the only state that conducts ongoing statewide surveillance for cold weather-related illnesses and deaths.

In 2008, 10.5 percent of hospitalizations were classified as preventable.

Tobacco use among mental health consumers is one factor that results in people who have mental illnesses dying 25 years earlier than the general population.

What do you think about this? Do you have an interesting fact for us to consider? If so, leave us a comment.