The Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Cocaine on Newborn Costs and Length of Stay / Theodore Joyce, Andrew D. Racine, Sandra McCalla, Hassan Wehbeh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Joyce, Theodore.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Racine, Andrew D.

McCalla, Sandra.

Wehbeh, Hassan.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w4673.

NBER working paper series no. w4673

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1994.

Summary:

This paper determines newborn costs and lengths of stay attributable to prenatal exposure to cocaine and other illicit drugs, using as a data source all parturients who delivered at a large municipal hospital in New York City between November 18, 1991 and April 11, 1992. We performed a cross-sectional analysis in which multivariate, loglinear regressions were used to analyze differences in costs and length of stay between infants exposed and unexposed prenatally to cocaine and other illicit drugs adjusting for maternal race, age, prenatal care, tobacco, parity, type of delivery, birth weight, prematurity, and newborn infection. Urine specimens, with linked obstetric sheets and discharge abstracts provided information on exposure, prenatal behaviors, costs, length of stay and discharge disposition. Our principal findings show that infants exposed to cocaine and some other illicit drug stay approximately 7 days longer at a cost of $7,731 more than infants unexposed. Approximately 60 percent of these costs are indirect, the result of adverse birth outcomes and newborn infection. Hospital screening as recorded on discharge abstracts substantially underestimates prevalence at delivery, but overestimates its impact on costs.

Notes:

Print version record

March 1994.