Medicaid claims alone have high sensitivity but low specificity in identifying child abuse and neglect.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Decision support tools, such as predictive risk models (PRMs), may assist medical personnel identify child abuse and neglect (CAN). However, no prior work has established whether Medicaid claims alone are sufficient for accurate prediction. We developed a Medicaid claims-based PRM to predict CAN, validating against medical encounters and clinical diagnoses that precede and follow a CAN-related diagnosis code.

Methods

We conducted a case-control study of Medicaid-enrolled children born in New York State between 2006 and 2008. Children with a CAN indicator in the first 10 years of life (case) were matched to children without (control) based on sex, race/ethnicity, county, low birthweight (<2,500 g), birth year, and months enrolled in Medicaid. Outcomes in 1 year inc

SUBMITTER: Pac J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12907437 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature