BACKGROUND Care advances in the United States (US) have led to improved survival of children with neurological impairment (NI). Children with NI may account for an increasing proportion of hospital resources. However, this assumption has not been tested at a national level. METHODS AND FINDINGS We conducted a study of 25,747,016 US hospitalizations of children recorded in the Kids' Inpatient ...

OBJECTIVES To describe the inpatient length of stay and related charges for adults in the United States with childhood-onset chronic disease and to examine patterns with respect to different hospital settings. DESIGN We analyzed data from the 2002 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a nationally representative data set of hospital discharges. We performed a case-mix-adjusted, sample-weighted regress...

BACKGROUND Cervical spine fractures with spinal cord injury (CFSCI) can be devastating. We describe the epidemiology of children and adolescents with CFSCI. METHODS Using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database, we identified 4418 patients (≤18 years old) who had CFSCI from 2000 through 2010. Outcomes of interest were patient characteristics (age, sex), injury characteristics [fracture...

OBJECTIVE There are few studies comparing the economic costs and reimbursements for aneurysm clipping versus coiling, and none are from the United States. Our hypothesis predicted that coiling would result in shorter lengths of hospitalization than clipping in patients with unruptured aneurysms and would therefore result in lower hospital charges. However, because of the severity of subarachnoi...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate risk factors for ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), as well as its influence on in-hospital mortality, resource utilization, and hospital charges. DESIGN Retrospective matched cohort study using data from a large US inpatient database. PATIENTS Patients admitted to an ICU between January 1998 and June 1999 who received mechanical ventilation for > 24 h. MEASUREM...

BACKGROUND Cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) is the most common cause of spinal cord dysfunction. OBJECTIVE To determine the feasibility of a randomized clinical trial comparing the clinical effectiveness and costs of ventral vs dorsal decompression with fusion surgery for treating CSM. METHODS A nonrandomized, prospective, clinical pilot trial was conducted. Patients ages 40 to 85 year...

BACKGROUND As health care costs continue to increase worldwide, health care systems, and more specifically hospitals are facing continuous pressure to operate more efficiently. One service within the hospital sector whose cost structure has been modestly investigated is the Emergency Department (ED). The study aims to report on the distribution of ED resource use, as expressed in charges, and t...

OBJECTIVE To compare the surgical morbidity, postoperative course, and hospital charges of Burch colposuspension performed in conjunction with abdominal versus vaginal hysterectomy. METHODS Power analysis indicated that 35 women would be needed in each group to detect a 20% difference in hospital charges between groups with a beta error of 20% and an alpha error of 5%. A computerized records ...

BACKGROUND Periprosthetic hip fractures (PPHFx) are challenging complications that have become increasingly more prevalent. Wide variability exists in the quality and size of prior studies pertaining to hospital stay information. This study used the largest publicly available database in the United States to evaluate perioperative hospital data of PPHFx. METHODS The Healthcare Cost and Utiliz...

The American Academy of Family Physicians defines continuity of care as “the process by which the patient and his/her physician-led care team are cooperatively involved in ongoing health care management toward the shared goal of high-quality, cost-effective medical care.” Haggerty et al. identified three types of continuity in every discipline: informational, management, and relational. Informa...