An Economic Analysis of Intensive Multidisciplinary Interventions for Treating Medicaid-Insured Children with Pediatric Feeding Disorders

Background. Intensive multidisciplinary intervention (IMI) represents a well-established treatment for pediatric feeding disorders (PFDs), but program availability represents an access care barrier. We develop an economic analysis of IMI for weaning from gastronomy tube (G-tube) treatment for children diagnosed with PFDs from the Medicaid programs’ perspective, where Medicaid programs refer to both fee-for-service and managed care programs. Methods. The 2010–2012 Medicaid Analytic eXtract claims provided health care data for children aged 13 to 72 months. An IMI program provided data on average admission costs. We employed a finite-horizon Markov model to simulate PFD treatment progression assuming 2 treatment arms: G-tube only v. IMI targeting G-tube weaning. We compared the expenditure differential between the 2 arms under varying time horizons and treatment effectiveness. Results. Overall Medicaid expenditure per member per month was $6814, $2846, and $1550 for the study population of children with PFDs and G-tube treatment, the control population with PFDs without G-tube treatment, and the no-PFD control population, respectively. The PFD-diagnosed children with G-tube treatment only had the highest overall expenditures across all health care settings except psychological services. The expenditure at the end of the 8-year time horizon was $405,525 and $208,218 per child for the G-tube treatment only and IMI arms, respectively. Median Medicaid expenditure was between 1.7 and 2.2 times higher for the G-tube treatment arm than for the IMI treatment arm. Limitations. Data quality issues could cause overestimates or underestimates of Medicaid expenditure. Conclusions. This study demonstrated the economic benefits of IMI to treat complex PFDs from the perspective of Medicaid programs, indicating this model of care not only holds benefit in terms of improving overall quality of life but also brings significant expenditure savings in the short and long term.