Back to Search
Start Over
Variation in Inpatient Resource Use in the Treatment of HIV
- Source :
- Medical Care. 37:220-227
- Publication Year :
- 1999
- Publisher :
- Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health), 1999.
-
Abstract
- OBJECTIVE To estimate the impact of insurance status on inpatient resource use after adjusting for health upon admission and site of care. DESIGN Detailed patient information linked to billing records from the AIDS Cost and Service Utilization Survey (ACSUS), a longitudinal analysis of inpatient and outpatient care between March 1991 and August 1992. SETTING Hospitalizations of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients from 10 US cities with high incidence of AIDS. PATIENTS One thousand, nine hundred and forty nine adolescents and adults at various stages of HIV. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES We estimate inpatient charges, payments and length of stay as a function of patient, and provider and reimbursement characteristics for more than 1,500 hospitalizations to HIV patients. We control for patient characteristics and underlying risk factors including disease stage, CD4 percentage, mode of transmission, discharge status, type of admission, and region. We use hospital-fixed effects to control for unmeasured differences across facilities. RESULTS Unadjusted means indicate that uninsured patients or patients covered by public insurance have significantly lower charges and payments than privately insured patients with similar medical conditions. We find that those differences are substantially reduced after controlling for the hospital in which care is received. Further, we find little evidence that "underinsured" patients are discharged sooner on average. CONCLUSIONS Inpatient resource use is affected by both the hospital in which care is received and the type of patient admitted. Failure to control for unmeasured differences across hospitals is likely to overstate the impact of insurance substantially.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Male
medicine.medical_specialty
Adolescent
media_common.quotation_subject
HIV Infections
Disease
Insurance, Hospitalization
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)
Ambulatory care
Humans
Medicine
Longitudinal Studies
Reimbursement
Quality of Health Care
media_common
Medically Uninsured
Health economics
Medicaid
business.industry
Transmission (medicine)
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Length of Stay
medicine.disease
Payment
Hospital Charges
Hospitals
United States
Underinsured
Health Care Surveys
Emergency medicine
Health Resources
Female
business
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 00257079
- Volume :
- 37
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Medical Care
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....47ecb63a86c1becc121ef58c336ad094