Changes in prenatal care timing and low birth weight by race and socioeconomic status: implications for the Medicaid expansions for pregnant women.

OBJECTIVE: To conduct the first national study that assesses whether the Medicaid expansions for pregnant women, legislated by Congress over a decade ago, met the policy objectives of improved access to care and birth outcomes for poor and near-poor women. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: Data on 8.1 million births using the 1980, 1986, and 1993 National Natality Files. We use births from all areas of the United States except California, Texas, Washington, and upstate New York. METHODS: We conduct a before and after analysis that compares obstetrical outcomes by race and socioeconomic status for the periods 1980-86 and 1986-93. We examine whether women of low socioeconomic status showed greater improvements in outcomes during the 1986-93 period compared to the 1980-86 period. We analyze two obstetrical outcomes: the rate of late initiation of prenatal care and the rate of low birth weight. DATA COLLECTION: Natality data were aggregated to race, socioeconomic status, age, and parity groups. RESULTS: During the 1986-93 period, rates of late initiation of prenatal care decreased by 6.0 to 7.8 percentage points beyond changes estimated for the 1980-86 period for both white and African American women of low socioeconomic status. For some white women of low socioeconomic status, the rate of low birth weight was reduced by 0.26 to 0.37 percentage points between 1986 and 1993 relative to the earlier period. Other white women of low socioeconomic status and all African American women of low socioeconomic status showed no relative improvement in the rate of low birth weight during the 1986-93 period. CONCLUSIONS: The expansions in Medicaid lead to significant improvements in prenatal care utilization among women of low socioeconomic status. The emerging lesson from the Medicaid expansions, however, is that increased access to primary care is not adequate if the goal is to narrow the gap in newborn health between poor and nonpoor populations.

Health care access and use among low-income children: who fares best?

In this paper we assess how access to care and use of services among low-income children vary by insurance status. Although 40 percent of low-income children rely on private health insurance, little is known about how this coverage compares with Medicaid coverage in meeting their health care needs. We find that Medicaid and privately insured low-income children appear to have fairly comparable access but that Medicaid-covered children are more likely to receive services and to have more visits when they receive care. Expanding public coverage may not be sufficient to ensure that all low-income children have access to comprehensive and high-quality care. It may require improvements in preventive and dental care for children with private coverage, an area in which states have limited influence.

Prenatal care, birth outcomes and newborn hospitalization costs: patterns among Hispanics in New Jersey.

CONTEXT: With the influx of Latin American immigrants to the United States and the relatively high fertility of Hispanic women, the importance of understanding patterns of birth outcomes within the heterogeneous Hispanic community is growing. METHODS: Vital statistics data linked with hospital discharge files for single, liveborn infants delivered in New Jersey to state residents in 1989 and 1990 are used to examine the effects of maternal birthplace and Hispanic ethnicity on early initiation of prenatal care, low birth weight, infant mortality and newborn hospital costs. Multivariate analyses control for a range of demographic, economic, behavioral and medical factors. RESULTS: White women of Puerto Rican descent have a significantly higher risk than both non-Hispanic whites and other Hispanic whites of having a low-birth-weight baby. However, their infants do not have an increased risk of mortality, and newborn hospitalization costs are not elevated for this group. Mexican-born white women begin prenatal care later than their U.S.-born counterparts, but do not have worse birth outcomes. The sharpest contrasts are not among Hispanics but between non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white women born in the same place. CONCLUSIONS: Ethnicity and birthplace affect prenatal care and birth outcomes but are probably not as significant as racial differences. Poor outcomes without elevated newborn costs may indicate less access to high-quality neonatal care among some ethnic groups.

PIP: Vital statistics data linked with hospital discharge files for single, live-born infants delivered in New Jersey (US) in 1989-90 were used to examine the effects of Hispanic ethnicity on prenatal care utilization, low birth weight, infant mortality, and newborn hospitalization costs. The findings indicate that disparities by race may be at least as important as variations in birthplace and ethnicity. Puerto Rican White women who gave birth in New Jersey were twice as likely, relative to their US-born non-Hispanic White counterparts, to have a low-birth-weight infant and to have an infant who died in the first year of life. In addition, their newborn hospitalization costs were 25% higher than those of US-born non-Hispanic White women. Women of Puerto Rican descent, regardless of whether they were born in the US, initiated prenatal care later than all other Whites, except the infants born in Mexico, and their infants had the highest rates of low birth weight and mortality among all Whites. Although the multivariate results indicated that ethnic Puerto Rican Black women begin prenatal care earlier and have better birth outcomes than non-Hispanic Blacks, the descriptive statistics showed that Puerto Rican Blacks and Whites have similar levels of prenatal care use and birth outcomes. Enhanced understanding of the sources of these racial disparities is important for the design of policies to improve birth outcomes. Poor outcomes without concomitant increases in hospitalization costs may be a sign of low access to high-quality neonatal care.

Medicaid coverage of maternity care for aliens in California.

The quantity and cost-effectiveness of prenatal care is a critical reproductive health issue as federal and state legislators consider reducing publicly funded services to aliens. An analysis of data from medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, shows that undocumented and legalized aliens who qualified for coverage under the provisions of federal legislation or the state's expansion of eligibility criteria accounted for 45% of deliveries financed by Medi-Cal in 1991; outlays for these deliveries are estimated at less than 2% of all Medi-Cal payments for that year. Most of these women also received prenatal care covered by Medi-Cal, but more than half were not enrolled in the program until after the first trimester of pregnancy (and thus may not have received adequate prenatal care). Alien women were enrolled for an average of 5-6 months of their pregnancy, whereas nonalien women who qualified for coverage were enrolled for about seven months. California's Proposition 187 would eliminate funding for prenatal care for undocumented aliens, but public outlays for labor and delivery could grow as a result of an increase in poor birth outcomes.

Defensive medicine and tort reform: new evidence in an old bottle.

Quantitative analysis of medical liability's influence on medical practice is a small but growing field. The three foregoing articles illustrate three of the possible analytic approaches: case study of technological diffusion, survey of physician responses to detailed clinical scenarios, and multivariate analysis of the relation of physicians' scenario responses to objective liability experience. The articles also offer a good picture of the state of the art: Many difficulties hamper research in this area, and these articles, like others, offer considerable illumination but leave much uncovered. Defensive medicine surely exists, but its effects on health care spending and access are unclear. The most important lessons for public policy are that tort reform may be necessary but not sufficient to reduce the problems associated with defensive medicine, and that the major malpractice problem continues to be malpractice.

Local responses to expanded Medicaid coverage for pregnant women.

Concern about high infant mortality and morbidity in the United States, combined with the erosion of private insurance coverage, sparked major expansions in the Medicaid program in the 1980s. This study examines how the Medicaid expansions for pregnant women affected access to prenatal care for low-income women through case studies conducted in four states early in 1991. Despite the significantly greater share of births covered by Medicaid in the period 1986 to 1991, the timely initiation of prenatal care improved in only one state. Although prenatal services increased in some areas, significant problems persisted in others. The growth in capacity of the prenatal care system was greatest when state and local policies designed to increase supply were also instituted. While the Medicaid expansions eliminated significant barriers to prenatal care for low-income women, other policies that have been designed to reduce the remaining barriers may be necessary in order significantly to expand access to prenatal care and to improve birth outcomes.

Is access to home health care a problem in rural areas?

In 1987, urban Medicare beneficiaries were 13.7% more likely than their rural counterparts to use Medicare home health care services. Regression analysis shows that rural use rates, particularly those in sparsely populated areas, fall short of those in urban areas, other things being equal. Rural areas have lower Medicare ceilings, proportionately fewer visiting nurse associations, and lower availability of auxiliary services. These factors combined account for 82% of the difference between rural and urban use rates.

How access to long-term care affects home health transfers.

This study examines the determinants of home health use after hospitalization for acute illness for eleven diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) in 1985, drawing on data from four primary sources: Medicare hospital bills, Medicare home health bills, the Medicare and Medicaid Automated Certification System files, and the American Hospital Association Survey. Separate Tobit models are estimated for each DRG. The analysis shows that transfers to home health care are heavily influenced by the hospital's long-term care arrangement and by conditions in local nursing home and home health care markets. Especially important is whether a hospital has its own long-term care unit, swing beds, or both, and whether nursing home beds are available in the local area. Patients discharged from hospitals are more likely to use home health care in areas with a low supply of nursing home beds and low Medicaid reimbursement levels for skilled nursing facilities. The results of this study have implications for proposals to extend Medicare's Prospective Payment System for hospital services to include postacute care. Proponents of a "bundled payment" that encompasses both acute and postacute services argue that the current system leads to inefficiencies and inequities. This analysis points to systematic relationships between home health and nursing home services, which should be factored into the development of a bundled payment policy.

Rural and urban differentials in Medicare home health use.

This article addresses whether the use of Medicare home health services differs systematically for rural and urban beneficiaries. It draws on Medicare data bases from 1983, 1985, and 1987, including the Health Insurance Skeleton Write-Off (HISKEW) files and the Home Health Agency (HHA) 40-percent Bill Skeleton files. It presents background information on rural and urban beneficiaries and contrasts the use rates, visit levels and profiles, episodes of home health use, and primary diagnoses in rural and urban areas. The results point to higher home health use rates in urban areas and to a narrowing of the urban-rural use differential from 1983 to 1987. Rural home health users receive on average three more visits than their urban counterparts, with many more skilled nursing and home health aide visits. However, rural enrollees are much less likely than urban enrollees to receive medical social service or therapeutic visits, even after controlling for primary diagnosis. These findings point to the need for further analysis to understand the consequences of these differences.

Explaining area variation in the use of Medicare home health services.

This study examines the determinants of area-level variation in Medicare home health use in 1985 for the entire United States, using data from Medicare Home Health Bills, the Medicare/Medicaid Automated Certification System, the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review Files, and other sources. Weighted two-stage least squares regression was used to analyze variation in the number of home health users per 1,000 enrollees and the average number of visits received per user. The data were aggregated to the Metropolitan Statistical Area and the rural part of the state, resulting in 343 units of analysis. According to the study's results, higher proportions of Medicare enrollees use home health services in areas with fewer nursing home beds per enrollee, higher hospital discharge rates, and shorter mean lengths of stay, higher Medicare reimbursement ceilings for skilled nursing home health visits, and more home health agencies per enrollee. Other things being equal, beneficiaries in New England are 40% more likely to use home health services than their counterparts in other regions with similar climates. The average number of visits received by home health users appears to be higher in areas where there are more agencies per enrollee and a higher share of agencies that are proprietary. There also appear to be large regional differences in the number of visits received per user. Our results imply that constrained access to nursing home beds is leading to higher levels of Medicare home health use and that there may be further savings from the substitution of home health services for hospital days. The study shows that Medicare reimbursement ceilings may constrain use and that access may be a problem for beneficiaries in areas with fewer agencies per enrollee. This study also points to significant regional variation in the proportion of beneficiaries who use home health services, even with controls for many different explanatory variables. Overall, our results suggest the possibility of serious limitations in access to Medicare home health services.

Understanding the effects of PPS on Medicare home health use.

This study examines changes between 1983 and 1985 in the use of Medicare home health services. The key finding is that while overall increases in the proportion of Medicare enrollees who use home health services and the average number of visits received were relatively small, they were much greater than they would have been without the Prospective Payment System. The introduction of prospective payment for Medicare hospital services appears to have increased Medicare outlays for home health by an estimated 25%. In an effort to reduce patient stays, it appears that hospitals discharged more patients to home health and that home health users were discharged earlier, thus increasing both the number of users and the number of visits received per user. The study also found that changes in nursing home bed supplies and Medicaid reimbursement rates appear to bring about changes in home health use. These results have implications for understanding the impacts on home health services of changes in Medicare and Medicaid policies in other sectors.