Newswise — Hospitalizations for tuberculosis fell from 15,000 in 1995 to 8,800 in 2006, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. However, the number of hospitalizations for patients who were hospitalized for other conditions but who also had tuberculosis only fell about 10 percent to 49,700 in 2006 from 55,500 in 1995.
Tuberculosis " often called TB " is an infectious disease that mostly attacks the lungs. It is usually treated on an outpatient basis, but severe cases require hospitalization. People at risk include those with weakened immune systems because of illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and HIV as well as people who are malnourished, homeless, alcohol or IV drug users, or from countries with high TB rates. Increased federal funding for prevention and control programs may have helped reduce the number of TB cases since the early 1990s; however, the problem remains especially high in certain areas and certain populations.
When AHRQ looked at hospitalizations for TB in 2006, it found that:
"¢ People from communities with average household incomes under $36,000 a year were more than twice as likely to be hospitalized for TB as were people from communities with higher incomes. "¢ Medicaid paid for about 25 percent of TB hospitals stays. About 20 percent of TB stays were for patients without insurance, even though on average uninsured patients make up only about 5 percent of hospital stays. Medicare and private insurers paid for the rest. "¢ TB rates were more than twice as high in the Northeast than in the Midwest, where the rates were lowest. There were 3.6 stays per 100,000 population for TB in the Northeast compared to only 1.4 stays in the Midwest.
This AHRQ News and Numbers is based on data from HCUP Statistical Brief #60: Tuberculosis Stays in U.S. Hospitals, 2006 (http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb60.pdf). The report uses statistics from the 2006 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a database of hospital inpatient stays that is nationally representative of inpatient stays in all short-term, non-Federal hospitals. The data are drawn from hospitals that comprise 90 percent of all discharges in the United States and include all patients, regardless of insurance type, as well as the uninsured.
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