Hospital resource utilization among patients with sickle cell disease.

In the United States, sickle cell disease primarily affects African Americans and carries a high risk of disability, making its sufferers particularly vulnerable. Sickle cell patients often experience unexpected, intermittent, and life-threatening complications leading to high levels of emergency room use and frequent hospitalizations. Using national discharge data from not-for-profit hospitals, this study explores the relationship between patient and hospital characteristics and hospital resource use by sickle cell patients. A random-effects least squares regression analysis was used to examine relationships between patient and hospital characteristics and hospital charges and length of stay. Patient characteristics, especially severity measures, related significantly to total hospital charges, length of stay, and average daily charges, but few hospital characteristics were associated significantly with these outcomes.