TY - JOUR AU - Joyce,Theodore AU - Racine,Andrew D. AU - McCalla,Sandra AU - Wehbeh,Hassan TI - The Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Cocaine on Newborn Costs and Length of Stay JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 4673 PY - 1994 Y2 - March 1994 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4673 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4673.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Theodore J. Joyce Baruch College & Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave, 5th Fl New York, NY 10016-4309 Tel: 212/817-7960 Fax: 212/817-1597 E-Mail: theodore.joyce@baruch.cuny.edu Andrew D. Racine Albert Einstein College of Medicine Children's Hos Division of General Pediatrics 1621 Eastchester Road Bronx, NY 10461 Tel: 718/405-8092 Fax: 212/817-1597 E-Mail: aracine@montefiore.org Hassan Wehbeh AB - This paper determines newborn costs and lengths of stay attributable to prenatal exposure to cocaine and other illicit drugs, using as a data source all parturients who delivered at a large municipal hospital in New York City between November 18, 1991 and April 11, 1992. We performed a cross-sectional analysis in which multivariate, loglinear regressions were used to analyze differences in costs and length of stay between infants exposed and unexposed prenatally to cocaine and other illicit drugs adjusting for maternal race, age, prenatal care, tobacco, parity, type of delivery, birth weight, prematurity, and newborn infection. Urine specimens, with linked obstetric sheets and discharge abstracts provided information on exposure, prenatal behaviors, costs, length of stay and discharge disposition. Our principal findings show that infants exposed to cocaine and some other illicit drug stay approximately 7 days longer at a cost of $7,731 more than infants unexposed. Approximately 60 percent of these costs are indirect, the result of adverse birth outcomes and newborn infection. Hospital screening as recorded on discharge abstracts substantially underestimates prevalence at delivery, but overestimates its impact on costs. ER -