Should children's hospitals have special consideration in reimbursement policy?

Children's hospitals were excluded indefinitely from the prospective payment system until a methodology for their reimbursement could be developed. Special consideration in reimbursement policy could be made for children's hospitals if their patients were generally more resource intensive than the pediatric patients of other hospitals. The resource intensity of patients in children's hospitals was compared with pediatric patients in other hospital groups. The results indicate that the patient population of children's hospitals is similar to the pediatric patient population of university hospitals and considerably different from the pediatric patient populations of the urban and rural hospitals.