Health care advocates said city officials might be too quick in claiming credit because additional research was needed to confirm why hospitalization rates dropped.

Very large reductions in costs resulted from lower hospitalization rates.

Even more telling is the hospitalization rate.

Kaiser says another reason its costs stay down is that its hospitalization rate is relatively low.

New cases of tuberculosis and lead poisoning and the hospitalization rate for children with asthma were also down.

For example, black children have hospitalization rates for asthma about three times those of whites.

A related journal article found that hospitalization rates for asthma among children up to age 17 also increased from 1979 to 1987.

The hospitalization rate for hyperparathyroidism in the United States in 1999 was 8.0 out of 100,000.

Normally, the high hospitalization rate would be just another ignoble statistic for a poor urban neighborhood.

There are no comparable citywide numbers; the best available measure is the hospitalization rate.