Study: Implementing ED Pediatric Readiness Is Cost-Effective

A large team of healthcare researchers has done a comprehensive study of pediatric readiness in hospital emergency departments (EDs) and found that, not only is pediatric readiness important in and of itself; it also makes EDs cost-effective in their operations.

The team of 15 researchers, led by Christopher Weyant of Stanford University, has published an article in the October issue of Health Affairs, entitled “Cost-Effectiveness And Health Impact Of Increasing Emergency Department Pediatric Readiness In The US.”

The authors write that “The quality of emergency department (ED) care of emergency department (ED) care for children in the US is high variable. The National Pediatric Readiness Project aims to improve survival for children receiving emergency services. We conducted a cost-effectiveness analysis of increasing ED pediatric readiness, using a decision-analytic simulation model,” they write. Doing an analysis of emergency services at 747 ED in eleven states, the authors “performed probabilistic, one-way, and subgroup sensitivity analyses.”

What they found is that “Increasing ED pediatric readiness yields 6,1000 QALYs [quality-adjusted life-years] for the eleven-state cohort, costing $9,3000 per QALY gained. Achieving high readiness national yields 179,000 QALYs at the same ICER (with implementation costs of approximately $260 million). Implementing ED pediatric readiness for all EDs in the US is highly cost-effective.”

Further, the researchers note in their article, “Among the many new technologies, surgical advances, imaging techniques, and novel treatments used daily for patients across the US, relatively few have been shown to improve survival and be cost-effective. Our study,” they write, “suggests that an ED-specific intervention focused entirely on children is highly cost-effective and…could result in potential benefits for millions of children.”