Across multiple measures, children's hospitals employ starkly different methods regarding costs and practices when managing inpatients with asthma, according to a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from 48,887 patients hospitalized at 37 major U.S. children's hospitals between 2011 and 2014. Data was collected from the Pediatric Health Information Dataset. Researchers grouped patients with counterparts displaying similar characteristics. Among these groups of similar patients, median cost, length of stay and time spent in the intensive care unit varied greatly among the hospitals.
"As the most prevalent chronic illness in children, asthma imposes a major financial burden on many healthcare systems," said study leader Jeffrey H. Silber, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Outcomes Research at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "If hospitals can better understand if their care practices are disproportionately expensive and inefficient compared to other hospitals, they may be better able to pinpoint opportunities for quality improvements."
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