Out-of-Pocket Spending for Deliveries and Newborn Hospitalizations Among the Privately Insured.

* Abbreviation: ICD-10-CM — : International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification Childbirth is the most common reason for hospitalization in the United States.1 Concern is growing regarding the high and rising financial burden of childbirth for privately insured families.2 Previous studies assessing this burden have focused on out-of-pocket spending for maternal care, including hospitalizations for delivery.2 However, there are no recent national data on out-of-pocket spending across the childbirth episode, including both deliveries and newborn hospitalizations. We estimated this spending using national commercial claims data. We analyzed 2016–2019 data from Optum’s deidentified Clinformatics Data Mart, which includes 12 million annual privately insured enrollees in all states. The University of Michigan exempted this study from human subjects review. The unit of analysis was a “childbirth episode,” defined as a delivery linked to ≥1 newborn hospitalization covered by the same family plan. Deliveries were hospitalizations … Address correspondence to Kao-Ping Chua, MD, PhD, University of Michigan, 300 North Ingalls St, SPC 5456, Room 6E18, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-5456. E-mail: chuak{at}med.umich.edu