Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech

Hospitals Are Less Likely To Admit Publicly Insured Children, But Outcomes Aren’t Affected

January 16, 2017 By Princeton University

Hospitals are less likely to admit children covered by public insurance such as Medicaid than privately insured children with similar symptoms, especially when hospitals beds are scarce. But the disparity doesn’t appear to affect health outcomes, according to Princeton University researchers who analyzed information on tens of thousands of children who came to New Jersey emergency rooms between 2006 and 2012.

“In the end, I think we came to kind of a surprising conclusion that maybe the problem isn’t that too few publicly insured children are being hospitalized,” says Princeton health economist Janet Currie . “Maybe the problem is that too many privately insured children are being hospitalized when they don’t really need it.”

The research was conducted by Currie, the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, chair of the Department of Economics, and co-director of the Center for Health and Wellbeing, and Diane Alexander, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago who earned her PhD at Princeton.

Their article, titled “Are Publicly Insured Children Less Likely to Be Admitted to Hospital Than the Privately Insured (and Does it Matter)?”, was published by the journal Economics and Human Biology. 

Currie, who has done extensive research on patients covered by Medicaid, said she was drawn to the project by the challenge of understanding whether hospitals treat people insured by Medicaid and SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) differently than people with private insurance. On average, hospitals receive lower payments for treating publicly insured children than privately insured ones.

To answer the question, Currie and Alexander examined records on all children between the ages of 3 months and 13 years who came to a New Jersey emergency room over seven years. The researchers recorded whether the child was admitted to the hospital and whether hospital beds were in high demand at the time because of local influenza outbreaks.

They found that publicly insured children were less likely to be admitted to the hospital overall, even when controlled for factors such as their diagnosis and characteristics of the hospitals. The disparity widened when hospital beds were scarce.

“That sounds kind of sinister, but we see absolutely no evidence it results in any increased return trips to the emergency room or that those who return are sicker,” Currie says. “As far as we can see, yes, people are being turned away because they have public health insurance, but there’s no health consequence.”

Why does the disparity in admission rates matter?

Unnecessary hospital admissions have important consequences, Currie says, including the risk of hospital-acquired infections and other complications, the cost of hospitalization, and the time children are away from school.

Anna Aizer, an associate professor of economics and public policy at Brown University who studies health outcomes for the poor, points to the finding that privately insured children may be over-treated as especially significant.

“This is an important finding that is likely to spur more research examining whether similar patterns are evident in other contexts,” Aizer says. “The results will likely have important implications for policymakers interested in understanding and addressing both rising health care costs and disparities in health.”

Currie said the research is part of a larger project that is examining how health care is allocated in a range of situations, including heart attacks and cesarean sections.

“There are people who are getting things they don’t need and then there are people who do need treatments but aren’t getting them,” Currie says. “So, in some sense, the procedures aren’t being matched properly to the patients. If you kept the same amount of care and allocated it better, you could have better health outcomes for the same overall cost.”

Related Articles Read More >

Logos of Creo Medical and Intuitive
Creo Medical inks collaboration agreement with Intuitive
Lazurite ArthroFree wireless surgical camera system Minnetronix Medical
How Minnetronix Medical helped Lazurite with its wireless surgical camera
Medtronic Hugo robot-assisted surgery system
The road to a robot: Medtronic’s development process for its Hugo RAS system
A portrait of Stryker executive Siddarth Satish
How Stryker includes users for product design in the digital age

DeviceTalks Weekly.

May 20, 2022
DeviceTalks Boston Post-Game – Editors’ Top Moments, Insulet’s Eric Benjamin on future of Omnipod 5
See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

Enewsletter Subscriptions

Enewsletter Subscriptions

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech 100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to E-newsletter
  • Attend our Monthly Webinars
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech