Hospital and ED charges for spina bifida care in the United States between 2006 and 2014: Over $2 billion annually.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
BACKGROUND: More children with spina bifida (SB) are surviving into adulthood. Unfortunately, little data exist regarding the economic implications of modern SB care. OBJECTIVE: We examined economic data from two national databases to estimate the annual nationwide hospital and emergency charges of SB from 2006-14. METHODS: We analyzed the 2006-2014 Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) and Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS). SB patients were defined using ICD-9-CM codes. Demographic and charge data were obtained from each database. Multiple imputation was used to estimate missing data (1.6% for NIS and 22% in NEDS). The principal outcomes were mean, median, and total charges for encounters each year. RESULTS: There were 725,646 encounters for individuals with SB between 2006 and 2014. The average age of captured SB patients who were admitted to a hospital or seen in an ER was 29 years. In 2014, the median charge for inpatient encounters was $31,071 (IQR: $15,947, $63,063) and for ER encounters was $2407.02 (IQR: $1321.91, $4211.35). In total, the sum of charges from all SB-related admissions in 2014 was $1,862,016,217 (95% CI: $1.69 billion, $2.03 billion), while the sum of charges of all SB-related ER encounters in 2014 was $176,843,522 (95% CI: $158 million, $196 million). There was a steady increase in charges over the study period. CONCLUSION: Charges for SB-related inpatient and emergency care in the US in 2014 was in excess of $2 billion in contrast to $1.2 billion in 2006, after adjusting for inflation; this is an impressively high figure for a relatively small number of patients.
Full Text
Duke Authors
- Inouye, Brian Masao
- Pomann, Gina-Maria
- Purves, J Todd
- Routh, Jonathan Charles
- Tejwani, Rohit
- Wiener, John Samuel
Cited Authors
- Inouye, BM; Jiang, R; Alkazemi, MH; Wang, H-HS; Wolf, S; Pomann, G-M; Tejwani, R; Wiener, JS; Purves, JT; Routh, JC
Published Date
- July 2019
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 12 / 3
Start / End Page
- 431 - 436
PubMed ID
- 30711573
Pubmed Central ID
- 30711573
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1876-7583
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1016/j.dhjo.2019.01.007
Language
- eng
Conference Location
- United States