A National Profile of Health Care Utilization and Expenditures for Children With Special Health Care Needs—Correction FREE

Numerical Errors. In the Original Article by Newacheck and Kim titled “A National Profile of Health Care Utilization and Expenditures for Children With Special Health Care Needs,” in the January issue of the ARCHIVES (2005;159:10-17), the text contained errors due to a computer program coding problem. On page 11 in the section “Prevalence of Special Health Care Needs,” the first sentence should have read as follows: “An estimated 11.7 million US children (16.2%) younger than 18 years had a special health care need in 2000.”

On page 12 in the section “Use of Health Services,” the second sentence should have read as follows: “Specifically, CSHCN had about 3.4 times the number of hospitalizations (86 vs 27 discharges per 1000; P<.01) and spent about 7 times as many days in hospitals as other children (552 vs 90 days per 1000; P<.01).”

On page 12 in the section “Expenditures for Health Services,” the first sentence should have read as follows: “Total health care expenditures averaged $2335 for CSHCN, more than 3 times the average of $652 for children without special health care needs (P<.01) (Table 3).” In the same paragraph, the third sentence should have read as follows: “For example, CSHCN had about 5 times higher hospital care expenses ($552 vs $116; P<.01), more than double the amount of physician services expenses ($412 vs $160; P<.01), and 6 times greater nonphysician services expenses than children without special health care needs ($146 vs $25; P<.01).”

On page 14 in the left column, the second to last sentence of the first paragraph should have read as follows: “When financial burden was expressed as a share of income, children in households with incomes less than 200% of the FPL spent about 159% more of their family’s income on health care (95% CI, 95%-242%) and those living in households with incomes between 200% and 400% of the FPL spent about 55% (95% CI, 15%-108%) more than their counterparts in households with incomes at or above 400% of the FPL.”

On page 15, the first 2 sentences of the first paragraph should have read as follows: “Altogether, CSHCN constitute 16.2% of the child population but 37.3% of total health care expenditures. Excluding dental care expenses, CSHCN accounted for 45.5% of total medical care costs for children in 2000.”

A corrected set of tables can be obtained by e-mailing Paul W. Newacheck, DrPH, at pauln@itsa.ucsf.edu.