Trends, Diagnoses, and Hospitalization Costs of Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States of America.

Armeda Stevenson Wojciak,Corinne Peek-Asa,Aislinn Conrad,Resmiye Oral,Carol Coohey,Brandon Butcher

doi:10.3390/ijerph18147585

Abstract

We conducted a secondary analysis of the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) to examine child abuse and neglect hospitalization from 1998–2016. The NIS is the largest all-payer, inpatient care database in the United States and is maintained by the Health Care Utilization Project. Participants were youth 18 years and younger with discharged diagnoses of child abuse and neglect from hospitals. The rate of child abuse or neglect hospitalizations did not vary significantly over the study period (1998–2016), which on average was 6.9 per 100,000 children annually. Males (53.0%), infants (age < 1; 47.3%), and young children (age 1–3; 24.2%) comprised most of the child maltreatment cases. Physical abuse was the most frequent type of maltreatment leading to hospitalization. Government insurance was the most common payer source, accounting for 77.3% of all child maltreatment hospitalizations and costing 1.4 billion dollars from 2001–2016. Hospitalizations due to child abuse and neglect remain steady and are costly, averaging over $116 million per year. The burden on government sources suggests a high potential for return on investment in effective child abuse prevention strategies.

Highlights

There was no evidence of a significant time trend in the rate of child abuse or 6neglect
Our results demonstrated no significant change in child abuse and neglect hospitalization rates during the study period
Consistent with previous cross-sectional research on child abuse and neglect hospitalization rates [18,19,20], we found that boys under three years who received Medicaid had the highest frequency of child maltreatment hospitalizations across the sixteen years

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Child maltreatment is a global problem [1,2] with approximately 1 billion youth between ages 2–17 experiencing past-year violence [3]. Child victims of maltreatment experience poorer outcomes, including depression, inadequate physical health, suicidal ideation [4,5,6,7], lifelong health effects and early death [8]. In the United States, approximately 1 in 3 children will have a maltreatment investigation before the age of 18, with 1 in 8 children experiencing abuse or neglect during childhood [9,10]. In addition to consequences for children, child maltreatment is a pervasive public health problem on the rise

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion