Dive Brief:
- Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act has not been associated with changes to length-of-stay (LOS) or in-hospital mortality rates among general medicine patients at U.S. academic medical centers (AMCs), according to a recent study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
- The researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora looked at the subject in light of Medicaid's frequent association with longer hospitalizations and higher in-hospital mortality rates compared to other insurance types.
- Their objective was to characterize the impact of state Medicaid expansion status on payer mix, LOS, and in-hospital mortality, by examining discharge data from AMCs within the University HealthSystem Consortium between October 1, 2012 and September 30, 2015.
Dive Insight:
The researchers concluded that states' expansion status did not impact these two measurements.
Another recent study on Medicaid expansion did find an impact in a separate area: improved quality of care and health outcomes among low-income U.S. adults.
The new University of Colorado School of Medicine study examined the proportion of discharges -- at hospitals stratified according to state Medicaid expansion status -- by primary payer, LOS index, and mortality index, both before and after the state Medicaid expansions occurred.
The numbers involved 3,144,488 discharged patients from 156 hospitals in 24 expansion states plus Washington, D.C., and 1,114,464 discharged patients from 55 hospitals in 14 non-expansion states.
The hospitals in expansion states did see a 3.7% increase in Medicaid discharges and a 2.9% decrease in uninsured discharges, while hospitals in non-expansion states saw no significant change, the study found.