The Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Cocaine on Newborn Costs and Length of Stay
24 Pages Posted: 28 Dec 2000 Last revised: 18 Apr 2022
Date Written: March 1994
Abstract
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.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Impact of Augmented Prenatal Care on Birth Outcomes of Medicaid Recipients in New York City
-
The Changing Association between Prenatal Participation in WIC and Birth Outcomes in New York City
By Theodore Joyce, Diane Gibson, ...
-
The Effect of Maternal Drug Use on Birth Weight: Measurement Error in Binary Variables
By Robert Kaestner, Theodore Joyce, ...
-
By Nancy E. Reichman, Hope Corman, ...
-
Prenatal Drug Use and the Production of Infant Health
By Kelly Noonan, Nancy E. Reichman, ...
-
By Theodore Joyce and Michael Grossman
-
The Consequences and Costs of Maternal Substance Abuse in New York City
By Theodore Joyce, Andrew Racine, ...
-
By Naci H. Mocan and Kudret Topyan
-
By Theodore Joyce and Michael Grossman
-
Health Status, Health Care and Inequality: Canada vs. The U.S
By June O'neill and Dave M. O'neill