Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
J Perinatol. 2020 Jul;40(7):1091-1099. doi: 10.1038/s41372-020-0635-z. Epub 2020 Feb 26.
The growth in healthcare spending is an important topic in the United States, and preterm and low-birthweight infants have some of the highest healthcare expenditures of any patient population. We performed a retrospective cohort study of spending in this population using a large, national claims database of commercially insured individuals. A total of 763,566 infants with insurance coverage through Aetna, Inc. for the first 6 months of post-natal life were included, and received approximately $8.4 billion (2016 USD) in healthcare services. Infants with billing codes indicating preterm status (<37 weeks, n = 50,511) incurred medical expenditures of $76,153 on average, while low-birthweight status (<2500 g) was associated with average spending of $114,437. Infants born at 24 weeks gestation (n = 418) had the highest per infant average expenditures of $603,778. Understanding the drivers of variation in costs within gestational age and birthweight bands is an important target for future studies.
医疗保健支出的增长是美国的一个重要话题，早产儿和低出生体重儿的医疗保健支出是所有患者群体中最高的。我们使用大型全国商业保险个人索赔数据库，对该人群的支出进行了回顾性队列研究。共有 763566 名在 Aetna，Inc. 购买了产后前 6 个月保险的婴儿被纳入研究，他们共获得了约 84 亿美元（2016 年美元）的医疗服务。有计费代码表明早产儿状态（<37 周，n=50511）的婴儿平均医疗支出为 76153 美元，而低出生体重状态（<2500 克）的婴儿平均支出为 114437 美元。出生时胎龄为 24 周的婴儿（n=418）的每个婴儿平均支出最高，为 603778 美元。了解胎龄和出生体重范围内成本变化的驱动因素是未来研究的一个重要目标。
