Prevalence
• There were 94,600 cancer-related hospitalizations among children.
• Of these, 21,300 stays identified cancer as the principal diagnosis.
• The in-hospital death rate during stays principally for cancer was 3.0 percent — approximately 10 times higher than for all other pediatric hospital stays.
Patient characteristics
• 54.5 percent of cancer-related hospitals stays were for boys; 45.5 percent were for girls.
• The average age of children with cancer-related hospital stays was 8.1 years old.
• Nearly 92 percent of cases were covered by Medicaid or private insurance.
Healthcare costs
• On average, pediatric hospitalizations principally for cancer were 8 days longer and cost almost five times as much as hospitalizations for other pediatric conditions.
• The most expensive pediatric cancer hospitalizations were for leukemias ($55,700 mean cost per stay) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma ($46,900), largely because hospitalizations for these two cancers had the longest average lengths of stay.
• From 2000 to 2009, the mean cost per stay for pediatric cancer hospitalizations rose 36 percent.
• Pediatric stays principally for cancer cost nearly one billion dollars, accounting for over 5 percent of pediatric non-newborn inpatient hospital costs.
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