Diabetes treatment accounts for nearly $1 in every $4 spent by US hospitals, new government research shows.
The data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality show that hospitals allocated $83 billion in 2008 to caring for diabetics, or 23% of their total outlay for the year. Nearly one of every five hospitalizations involved a person with diabetes.
Hospitalizations involving diabetic care tended to be 25% more expensive than admissions of patients without diabetes. The mean length of stay for patients with diabetes was almost one day longer than for those without the disease. Medicare paid 60% of the hospital stays for diabetics, while Medicaid paid 10%.
The lowest rate of diabetes-related hospitalizations was in the West, where such cases accounted for nearly 1.9% of admissions. The South, at 2.8%, had the highest rate.
The research did not break down the statistics according to diabetes types.
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