XXXX : Influence of a Combined Inpatient/Outpatient @entity284 Treatment Regimen on the Average Length of Stay of a Medicaid NICU Population.

@entity1 @entity6767 @entity29908 @entity4784 @entity284
UNASSIGNED: Prescription opioid and @entity29908 have been increasing steadily year after year, and continue to be a serious national problem. A sequela of the increase in @entity4784 has been an increase in the number of @entity1 born with @entity4784 . These @entity1 often require costly, prolonged stays in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for drug withdrawal treatment. The authors studied a population of @entity1 from a large Medicaid health plan who were born with @entity6767 ( @entity6767 ) secondary to in utero opioid exposure to assess the average length of stay in the NICU, and to determine the variables that may account for differences in interinstitutional lengths of stay. The overall average length of stay for @entity6767 was 21.1 days for the 139 @entity1 included in the study. Analysis of the medication used for treatment revealed that @entity1 who were treated with a combined inpatient/outpatient regimen with @entity284 had an average length of stay of 11.4 days versus 25.1 days for @entity1 who were treated entirely as inpatients (P<0.001), a 55% reduction in average length of stay. In 2009 there were an estimated 13,600 cases of @entity6767 in the United States at a cost of  53,000 per case. A 55% reduction in length of stay corresponds to  396 million in annual savings for the treatment of @entity6767 . Development of successful combined inpatient/outpatient management programs for @entity6767 warrants further consideration. (Population Health Management 2015;18:392-397).
