Medicaid status did not significantly affect costs for children who were hospitalized because of asthma, according to Jeffrey H. Silber, MD, and his associates.
In a study of 17,739 matched pairs of children with and without Medicaid who were hospitalized because of asthma, the median cost for Medicaid patients was $4,263; for non-Medicaid patients, it was $4,160. The median difference in cost between Medicaid and non-Medicaid patients was $84, and the mean difference in cost was $49.
Both Medicaid and non-Medicaid patients had similar lengths of stay, with a median of 1 day for both groups. Intensive care unit use was similar, with 10.1% of Medicaid patients visiting the ICU, compared with 10.6% of non-Medicaid patients.
“Our study should serve to provide potential benchmarks for use and reimbursement standards, with implications for care and payment even when children are hospitalized outside the [Pediatric Hospital Information System],” the investigators wrote.
Find the full study in Pediatrics (doi: 10.1542/peds.2016-0371).