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Physical Child Abuse Sends Thousands to Hospitals (CME/CE)

MedPageToday, 2012

Researchers from the CDC and colleagues estimated the lifetime costs of one year of all forms of child abuse -- physical, sexual, and psychological abuse as well as neglect -- to be about $124 billion.
The findings come from an analysis of the 2006 Kids' Inpatient Database, which contains discharge data from 3,739 hospitals in 38 states.
Leventhal and colleagues looked at demographic characteristics, mean costs, and length of stay in three groups: Abused children Children admitted to the hospital for injuries with other causes (non-abusive) Children admitted to the hospital for other reasons
Overall, they found that an estimated 4,569 children were admitted to hospital for abusive injuries, compared with 189,414 who had non-abusive injuries and 2.29 million admitted for other reasons.
The most striking difference between children on Medicaid and those on other types of insurance, the researchers reported, was that 71.6% of abuse cases were on Medicaid, compared with 36.6% of non-abusive injury cases and 48.5% of cases with other causes for admission.
Analysis by age showed that children under age 1 were most at risk; the incidence in that age group was 58.2 per 100,000.
Again, those on Medicaid and under age 1 were at markedly higher risk, with an incidence of 133.1 cases per 100,000.
The 300 estimated deaths represented 6.6% of the abused group, while just 0.9% of those with non-abusive injuries and 0.5% of those admitted for other causes died.
The incidence was 4.09 per 100,000 for those under age 1, compared with 0.41 per 100,000 overall, the researchers reported.
On average, Leventhal and colleagues found, abused children spent more time in hospital at 7.4 days, which was significantly longer than the 3.9 days experienced by those with other injuries, and the 4.5 days for those admitted with other causes ( P <0.0001).
Correspondingly, the cost of abusive injuries was also significantly higher at $16,058 per case, on average, compared with $9,550 per case of non-abusive injury and $7,964 per case of admission for other causes ( P <0.0001).