Costs borne by families of children hospitalized in a pediatric intensive care unit: a pilot study.

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State: Public
Version: Final published version
Serval ID
serval:BIB_2C4C945447EC
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Costs borne by families of children hospitalized in a pediatric intensive care unit: a pilot study.
Journal
Swiss medical weekly
Author(s)
Wasserfallen J.B., Bossuat C., Perrin E., Cotting J.
ISSN
1424-7860 (Print)
ISSN-L
0036-7672
Publication state
Published
Issued date
23/12/2006
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
136
Number
49-50
Pages
800-804
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
Hospitalisation of a child in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) involves major stress for parents. They wish to stay at their child's bedside while at the same time giving the usual attention to their other children. The resultant out-of-pocket expenses have rarely been studied.
Over a 6-month period all the families of children hospitalised in our PICU for more than 4 days, speaking French and insured by our social security system, were eligible for inclusion. Participation was proposed only after diagnosis, treatment and prognosis had been determined. Costs were retrieved from a diary list of customised items and computed as the amount in excess of usual expenses until the end of the hospital stay.
117 children were hospitalised in our PICU for a total of 131 stays. The families of 16 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. One dropped out after a week at the parents' request. The children's age was 2.9 +/- 3.8 years and 67% were male. The majority had malformations (53%) or infections (33%). The total length of stay was 49 +/- 51 days, of which 24 +/- 41 were spent in the PICU. On average, parents spent CHF 86 +/- 31 every day, mainly on travel and meals. Over the entire hospital stay their expenses amounted to CHF 4,078 +/- 4,552.
Direct out-of-pocket expenses for parents of children hospitalised in the PICU are considerable. Improvement in the social security system may be necessary to address this issue.

Keywords
Child, Cost of Illness, Family, Female, Humans, Income/statistics & numerical data, Infant, Intensive Care Units, Pediatric/economics, Intensive Care Units, Pediatric/statistics & numerical data, Length of Stay/statistics & numerical data, Male, Pilot Projects, Switzerland
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
25/01/2008 14:12
Last modification date
20/08/2019 13:11
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