|
|
Community Impact
The lack of insurance impacts not only a child and his or her family but also the entire community. Proactive healthcare including well-baby/child checkups and a regular family pediatrician helps each children stay healthy. A healthy child spends more time in school and reduces emergency room visits for basic healthcare needs. Parents of healthy children also miss fewer days of work. Each uninsured child impacts the entire community in more ways than we can measure.
A USC Study of Children’s Health Initiatives indicates state and federal savings in the millions:
Healthy Kids Programs Helped Prevent More than 1,000 Hospitalizations Annually [pdf]
- Healthy Kids increases low-income children's access to primary care, thus decreasing their chance of hospitalizations for preventable illnesses and manageable conditions, such as bacterial pneumonia, gastroenteritis and asthma.
- Over 333,000 preventable child hospitalizations occurred in California between 2000 and 2005, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
- Nine CHIs helped prevent 1,050 hospitalizations per year over the six-year study period.
- 2,050 additional preventable hospitalizations per year might have been averted if the nine CHIs had been operational for the full six years.
- The average cost of a child hospitalization is $7,000.
- CHIs save the State of California and the federal government up to $7.3 million annually in healthcare costs by helping reduce the number of preventable hospitalizations.
- The State and federal government could save up to $30 million annually in health care costs if Healthy Kids were expanded to all California counties.
|
|
|
|
