title: The impact of early discharge laws on the health of newborns.
abstract: Using an interrupted time series design and a census of births in California over a 6-year period, we show that state and federal laws passed in the late 1990s designed to increase the length of postpartum hospital stays reduced considerably the fraction of newborns that were discharged early. The law had little impact on re-admission rates for privately insured, vaginally delivered newborns, but reduced re-admission rates for privately insured c-section-delivered and Medicaid-insured vaginally delivered newborns by statistically significant amounts. Our calculations suggest the program was not cost saving.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics and Econometrics, University of Notre Dame, 440 Flanner Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, United States.
authors.forename: William N
authors.initials: WN
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, United States.
authors.forename: Craig
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Garthwaite
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, United States.
authors.forename: Heng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wei
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002140:California; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D019458:Insurance Coverage; D007348:Insurance, Health; D007902:Length of Stay / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D008484:Medicaid; D017059:Models, Econometric; D010351:Patient Discharge / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D010359:Patient Readmission / Q000639:trends; D049590:Postpartum Period; D014481:United States