A team led by researchers at Chicago-based Lurie Children’s Hospital have developed the first pediatric-specific atlas of emergency and inpatient care access across the U.S., offering a data-driven view of how children receive acute care.
The research, published Nov. 5 in JAMA Pediatrics, maps where children go for emergency care and how hospitals refer pediatric patients to one another.
Investigators analyzed more than 27 million emergency and inpatient encounters involving children under 16 who were enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The data, gathered from 4,830 hospitals between January 2021 and December 2022, represented nearly half of all U.S. children.
The team identified 835 pediatric emergency service areas — which track home-to-hospital admissions — and 105 pediatric emergency referral regions, which represent hospital-to-hospital transfers. Of the cases studied, 89% of care and 92% of referrals occurred within these regions — far higher than rates seen in adult care models.
The findings suggest pediatric care is more regionalized than adult care, requiring children to travel long distances for specialized treatment. Researchers said the atlas could help inform regional planning, care coordination, policy efforts and pediatric research.
“If we want hospitals to work together, they need to know who they should be working with,” lead author Kenneth Michelson, MD, attending physician in the division of emergency medicine at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a Nov. 5 news release. “The biggest regional hospitals should really think of not just the kids that come to their doorstep, but take some ownership over the health and the care of really sick kids all across the region that they are in.”
See the full study here.
Editor’s note: This article was updated Nov. 15 at 8:20 a.m. CT.
