Articles Tagged with personal injury

In our previous blog we provided an overview of the cost of personal injury in the US based on various criteria mostly related to the patients. In part 2 we are going to look in depth at the cost of each particular type of injuries.

Unintentional injuries are by far the most common. More than 26 million people suffered unintentional injury in the US in 2013 according to the study “Incidence and costs of injuries to children and adults in the United States”. The total cost of these injuries almost reached $1.5 trillion.

Among the unintentional injuries, a third of them were falls. Every year more than 8 million people are visiting the emergency room after falling. More than 3 million are being treated because they were struck and approximately 2.5 million were motor vehicle occupants involved in a traffic accident. Another very common cause of unintentional injury is overexertion.

What does an injury really cost, not only in terms of medical spending but also in terms of work loss and decreased quality of life? A recent study by researchers from Brown University and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation and published in the Journal of Injury Epidemiology provides an economic analysis of the “real cost” of all 31,038,072 hospital-treated injuries in the US in 2013. While most previous studies on injury cost focus mostly on the acute medical cost they don’t address the cost of the burden of injury.

The study found that one American out of 10 visited the hospital for a non-fatal injury during the year under study. Medical spending including hospital and home care, emergency transportation, medicines and physical therapy for all of them came to a total of $168 billion. Future lost work from permanent disability came to a total of $223 billion and quality of life loss came to a total of $1,46 trillion.

The study also provide an in-depth analysis of the cost of injury by age, household income, payer, location, injury mechanism, intent and severity.

The rising prices of insulin has lead diabetes patients to cut back on insulin or to buy it on the black market putting them at risk of dangerous injury and even death. In 1996, a vial of Humalog insulin cost $21, it now costs close to $400. While the price of milk increased by 23%, over the last 20 years, the price of insulin increased by 1150%.

A mother interviewed by CBS New York said that even though she has insurance for her diabetic daughter, she has to pay $1300 out of pocket every 3 months. Other patients are turning to the black market where they can find insulin for much cheaper. This practice is dangerous as unscrupulous dealers might sell fake products that can have deadly consequences.

A recent study by Yale  researchers also found out that many patients are cutting on their insulin dose to try to save money. As a result they are exposing themselves to dangerous levels of glucose in the blood which ultimately can lead to death.

Overuse Injuries often occur when young athletes are pushed by their parents, their teachers or their coach to be highly specialized in one sport at an early age. As kids get back to school, many of them will be lead to focus on one specific chosen sport only. Supported by their parents and their teachers, they will try to develop into great athletes. However a recent study in Pediatrics shows that athletes below the age of 18 who are highly specialized in one sport only have a much higher risk to develop overuse injuries and to ultimately quit sports.

Most elite athletes practiced several sports as kids before they specialized in one sport in late adolescence

Social pressure to develop kids into superstar athletes has led parents to believe that early sport specialization and more practice is beneficial for their children. While focusing intensely on one sport in an early age may give a temporary advantage to a child, it may sadly result in an increased risk for injury that ultimately may cause the child to miss time from playing or to quit. Additionally the idea that elite athletes started to specialize at a young age is a misconception. Studies show that most of them participated in multi sports in their early teens and only specialized in one sport in late adolescence.

Firearm injuries are one of the leading causes of hospitalization for children and teenagers in the United States. A recent study by Bradley R. Herrin, Julie R. Gaither, John M. Leventhal and James Dodington compares hospitalization rates by age in urban settings (metropolitan counties of <50,000),  micropolitan settings (population 10,000-49,999) and rural settings (nonmetropolican nonmicropolitan counties of <10,000) . The searchers used the Kid’s Inpatient Database data from 2006, 2009 and 2012 to analyze 21,581 hospitalizations for firearm injuries. They excluded the children who died in the emergency room.

The study found that:

• More than 77% of hospitalizations for pediatric firearm injuries were teenagers from 15 to 19 year old living in urban settings