Uninsured kids in the PICU — more likely to die

I’ve written before about how poor children and children without health insurance are far more likely to need PICU care than are more affluent children. For example, although children on Medicaid account for 20 – 25% (depending upon the state) of children in America, about half of all children in America’s PICUs are on Medicaid. Once in the PICU, though, do the poorer kids have worse outcomes than the richer kids? Does their chronically disadvantaged situation set them up for being more difficult to treat and cure?

I’ve been looking for information about this crucial question for some time and recently found some disturbing data about it, in the form of an article in the journal Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (volume 7, pages 2-6, 2006). You need a subscription to the journal to get the article, but I’ll summarize its important findings for you.

First, the study confirmed that children without insurance are far more likely to suffer critical illness: ” . . . far more serious illness and injuries were associated with uninsured children admitted to the PICU.” But did that make it more likely that these children would suffer worse outcomes, or even make it more likely for them to die?

Unfortunately, uninsured children did have poorer chances of survival. In fact, they were three to four times more likely to die in the PICU. Why was that? The answer was not that they received different care in the PICU once they got there; the answer was that they were much sicker to start with. Compared to children with either private insurance or public assistance (Medicaid), the uninsured children came into the PICU in much worse shape, with far worse derangements in their physiological state. Most likely their parents, fearful of the cost, delayed bringing them to the hospital until sometimes it was too late to save them.

What can we learn from this? Lack of health insurance kills children. That is both a tragedy and a terrible indictment of how we presently care for America’s children.