{"id":18816,"date":"2023-10-10T04:06:22","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T09:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=18816"},"modified":"2023-10-10T04:06:25","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T09:06:25","slug":"us-pediatric-care-in-sorry-state-amid-upsurge-in-youth-mortality-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=18816","title":{"rendered":"US Pediatric Care in Sorry State Amid Upsurge in Youth Mortality Rate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Despite being one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world, the United States has witnessed a serious uptick in child and adolescent mortality of late.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new study has concluded that mortality rates among children<\/a> and teenagers in the United States increased by about 20 percent between 2019 and 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homicide, suicide, drug overdoses and car accidents were identified as primary reasons for this upsurge<\/a> among Americans aged between 10 and 19. The study authors also pointed out that COVID-19 \u201ccontributed little\u201d to this trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study was carried out by doctors affiliated to the Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, Dr. Yolanda Hancock, a board-certified pediatrician and public health expert who was not involved in the study, told Sputnik that the worrying situation is exacerbated by an apparent lack of proper pediatric care in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to her, the current state of affairs in US pediatrics formed thanks to several factors, one of them being the difference in healthcare reimbursement rates for children and adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She recalled how, \u201cduring and after the COVID<\/a>,\u201d pediatric emergency rooms and hospital wards were being completely shut down because, aside from the \u201cneed for space\u201d during the pandemic, some hospitals realized that they \u201cget more money by bringing more adults in who are sicker\u201d and deemed it more profitable to \u201cfocus on adults\u201d rather than \u201cbring pediatric care back in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hancock also pointed out that pediatric care requires specialists with proper training able to recognize \u201cpediatric issues\u201d and know how to treat them, and proper equipment such as, for example, the \u201cappropriately sized breathing tubes and masks\u201d to intubate a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last but not least, Hancock noted, is the fact that \u201cmany pediatric hospitals are being shut down and standalone hospitals aren’t offering pediatric inpatient services, there’s no place for children to be transferred once they are stabilized in an emergency department.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the public health policy point of view, Hancock argued that children in the United States are neither valued nor prioritized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She insisted that the US federal government, which \u201cprovides the coverage for children who are under-insured or not insured\u201d through Medicaid – a program that provides health insurance for Americans with limited income \u2013 should improve the reimbursement rates for children, \u201cbecause the majority of children who end up showing up in the department usually are insured by Medicaid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, Hancock added, every emergency department and hospital that provides emergency services and receives \u201cfederal dollars\u201d should be required to have both the staff \u201ctrained to navigate through pediatric emergencies\u201d and the equipment to deal with such emergencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sputnikglobe<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite being one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world, the United States has witnessed a serious uptick in child and adolescent mortality of late. A new study has concluded that mortality rates among children and teenagers in the United States increased by about 20 percent between 2019 and 2021. Homicide, suicide, drug overdoses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784],"tags":[2566,23177,1703,4490,2434,20943],"class_list":["post-18816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-mortality","tag-pediatric-care","tag-soaring","tag-teen","tag-troubled","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18818,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18816\/revisions\/18818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}