1 in 5 Hospitalizations Involve Diabetes Patients

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other federal health officials are especially concerned about diabetes because more than 30% of hospital stays covered by Medicare involved patients with diabetes.

Said another way, "Medicare was the most common expected payer for hospital stays for patients with diabetes (60%) followed by private insurance (23%)," while for patients without diabetes, private insurance was the most common expected payer, (38%), followed by Medicare, (32%) and Medicaid (20%).

Also, people in lower income brackets were more likely to be hospitalized for diabetes than people in high income brackets, according to the report.  For example, there were 3,232 diabetes stays per 100,000 people in the lowest income quartile, compared with 1,762 stays per 100,000 people in the highest income quartile.

The report is from H?CUP, the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, and is entitled Statistical Brief #93, Hospital Stays for Patients with Diabetes, 2008.