Employer-Sponsored Plan Expenditures for Infants Born Preterm.

ABSTRACT: Care for infants born preterm or with major birth defects is costly. Specific estimates of financial burden for different payers are lacking, in part because use of administrative data to identify preterm infants and costs is challenging. We used private health insurance claims data and billing codes to identify live births during 2013 and calculated first-year expenditures for employer-sponsored health plans for infants born preterm, both overall and stratified by major birth defects. We conservatively estimated that 7.7% of insured infants born preterm accounted for 37% of $2.0 billion spent by participating plans on the care of infants born during 2013. With a mean difference in plan expenditures of ∼$47 100 per infant, preterm births cost the included plans an extra $600 million during

SUBMITTER: Grosse SD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6029853 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature