Health Inequities in Manitoba: Is the Socioeconomic Gap

Health Inequities in Manitoba: Is the Socioeconomic Gap in Health Widening or Narrowing Over Time?
Cumulative Mental Illness
The grouping “Cumulative Mental Illness” was created to provide an overall indicator of the prevalence
of mental illness, accounting for the co–occurrence among mental illnesses. Cumulative prevalence was
defined as the proportion of the population who received a diagnosis for one or more of the following:
depression, anxiety, substance abuse, personality disorders, or schizophrenia. Refer to elsewhere
in the Glossary for the coding for each of the separate diagnoses listed above.
Note: Cumulative mental illness rates from previous recent findings are slightly higher than results
in this report, due to the exclusion of drugs in the definitions for this report compared to the RHA
Indicators Atlas 2009 (Fransoo et al., 2009). This is in an attempt to make the definition consistent across
all time periods, whereas the drug data are only available after 1995.
Data suppression
Data is suppressed when the number of persons or events involved is five or less in order to avoid
identification of individuals in an area. Data is not suppressed when the actual event count is zero. This
process of suppressing data is conducted to protect the anonymity of study participants.
Dementia
Dementia is a loss of brain function. It is not a single disease. Instead, dementia refers to a group of
illnesses that involve memory, behaviour, learning and communication problems, judgment, and
problem solving. The problems are progressive, which means they get worse overtime.
In this report, people are considered to have dementia if they meet one of the following conditions:
• one or more hospitalizations in five years with a diagnosis for dementia, including organic psychotic
conditions, cerebral degenerations and senility, ICD–9–CM diagnosis codes 290, 291.1, 292.2, 292.82,
294, 331, 797; ICD–10–CA diagnosis codes F00, F01, F02, F03, F04, F05.1, F06.5, F06.6, F06.8, F06.9,
F09, F10.7, F11.7, F12.7, F13.7, F14.7, F1.57, F16.7, F18.7, F19.7, G30, G31.0, G31.1, G31.9, G32.8, G91,
G93.7, G94, R54
• one or more physician visits in five years with a diagnosis for dementia, ICD–9–CM diagnosis codes
290, 294, 331, 797
The denominator includes all Manitoba residents aged 55 and older who were continuously registered
with Manitoba Health for at least one year in the five–year period.
Dental Extraction
The removal of a tooth from the mouth—in this report, only including those taking place in a hospital.
In this report, hospital–based dental extraction rates are reported for children under age five, when
severe tooth decay is the most common reason for dental extractions. The following codes identifying
hospital–based dental extractions were used: ICD–9–CM codes: 23.01 (extraction of deciduous tooth),
23.09 (extraction of other tooth), 23.11 (removal of residual root), and 23.19 (other surgical extraction
of tooth). ICD–10–CA codes: 1.FE.89 (total excision, includes excision (surgical) tooth, excision tooth
(impacted) and enucleation tooth (non erupted)) and 1.FE.57 (tooth extraction, includes tooth removal,
using forceps). A limitation with this measure is that dental extractions performed in a surgery clinic or a
private dentist’s office cannot be identified.
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy 195