News for Immediate Release
January 22, 2026
Harrisburg – PHC4 regularly releases new County-Level Utilization and Condition-Specific Reports using the timeliest data available in an effort to provide insight into hospital and ambulatory/outpatient surgery center usage across the Commonwealth.
Barry D. Buckingham, PHC4’s Executive Director, believes providing information about ambulatory/outpatient usage and rates of hospitalization for high interest conditions can give stakeholders in Pennsylvania valuable insight into health care usage across Pennsylvania counties. Buckingham went on to state, “This type of reporting is in direct support of PHC4’s mission of empowering Pennsylvanians through data transparency as a conduit to informed decision making.”
The County-Level Utilization Reports are updated every quarter and show the overall total number of inpatient hospitalizations and ambulatory/outpatient cases for Pennsylvania residents. These results are displayed by patient age, sex, and payer. The newly released County-Level Utilization Reports reflect data from Q2 of 2025.
PHC4’s County-Level Condition-Specific Reports focus on several high interest conditions displaying county-specific rates of hospitalization for Pennsylvania residents. This information reflects data from the state fiscal year 2025, which is July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. The analysis within the County-Level Condition-Specific Reports is limited to Pennsylvania general acute care hospitals.
PHC4 is an independent council formed under Pennsylvania statute (Act 89 of 1986, as amended by Act 15 of 2020) in order to address rapidly growing health care costs. PHC4 continues to produce comparative information about the most efficient and effective health care to individual consumers and group purchasers of health services. In addition, PHC4 produces information used to identify opportunities to contain costs and improve the quality of care delivered.
For more information, visit phc4.org or review the full report here.
Media contact:
Barry D. Buckingham, Executive Director, PHC4
