Table 4.
Weight Category | Number of Adolescents | Average Cost of Health Service | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||
Hospital Stay | P Valuec | Physician Visit | P Valuec | Prescription Drug | P Valuec | ||
Underweight | 49 | $1201 | .38 | $3697 | .32 | $639 | .15 |
Normal weight | 1841 | $269 | ref | $1897 | Ref | $340 | ref |
At risk for overweight | 619 | $379 | .37 | $2456 | .17 | $426 | .10 |
Overweight | 1019 | $360 | .44 | $2361 | .22 | $483 | .01 |
All Study Adolescents | 3528 | $327 | $2154 | $401 |
Ref indicates reference group.
Adolescents enrolled in Medicaid for at least 11 months in 2004.
Weight categories: underweight, body mass index (BMI) less than the 5th percentile; normal weight, BMI 5th to 84th percentile; at risk for overweight, BMI 85th to 94th percentile; overweight, BMI 95th or greater percentile.
P values of less than .05 indicate a statistically significant difference at the 95% confidence level (two-tail test). Average expenditures for the underweight, at-risk-for-overweight, and overweight groups are each compared with the average expenditures for the normal-weight group by difference-of-means tests.