Health care use among young children in day care. Results in a randomized trial of early intervention
M. C. McCormick, J. Brooks-Gunn, S. Shapiro, A. A. Benasich, G. Black and R. T. Gross
Infant Health and Development Program, Stanford, CA.
Exposure of young children to group day-care settings increases the risk of
illness and may result in higher use of medical care. These observations
raise concerns that the use of such settings for early intervention
programs for low-birth-weight infants may increase the already high burden
of medical care costs incurred by these children and their families. To
address the question of medical care use associated with center-based care,
we examined the hospital-based and ambulatory care reported for
participants of the Infant Health and Development Program. This project is
a multisite randomized trial of an early intervention program for preterm
low-birth-weight infants with an intervention including 2 years of
center-based care. The Intervention group did not differ in hospital-based
care and averaged only two more physicians' visits over the 3-year
observation period than the comparison group. We conclude that early
intervention programs involving high-quality group care are not accompanied
by substantial increases in health care use.