"Baby's first trip to the ER" is probably one photo that no one ever wants to put in a baby book. But a surprising number of newborns – 320,000 each year – visit an emergency department within their first month of life. For reasons that are likely a complex mix of socioeconomic and biological factors, black newborns across the U.S. are more than twice as likely to make the trip.
Henry Lee, MD, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford, broke down the stats of how often newborns end up in the emergency department and looked at race, age and insurance status. In collaboration with researchers at the University of California-San Francisco, Lee analyzed data from nationwide emergency room visits collected by the National Center for Health Statistics. The study appears in the May issue of the journal Pediatric Emergency Care.
The researchers found that 14.4 percent of black babies visited the emergency department, compared to 7.7 percent of Hispanic babies and 6.7 percent of white newborns. Some trips to the ER are unavoidable, such as when a baby has an infection or isn’t gaining weight. But it’s likely that some of these visits could have been prevented.
All babies must get a checkup within several days of being born. But if the delivering doctor failed to counsel the new parents about checkups – or if the doctor missed a common problem, such as jaundice – then the new family might end up in the ER instead of at a clinic. In addition to representing a lack of continuity of care for the newborns, these visits drive up health-care costs.
Additional studies may tease apart the factors that cause black newborns to end up in the emergency room more often than other groups, and to find ways to reduce spending on health care while providing better services.
“Improving the quality of care for this higher-risk group could also help to improve disparities and outcomes as well,” Lee said.
Previously: Decreasing demand on emergency department resources with “ankle hotline” and Speed it up: Two programs help reduce length of stay for emergency-room visitors
Photo by Olav Saltbones / Norwegian Red Cross
