Gun violence costs the healthcare system $3 billion a year.
A new study has revealed that the US spent $6.6 billion in hospital costs for gunshot victims between 2006 and 2014 – around $734.6 million per year.
However, this is only a fraction of the price. When accounting for emergency services and long-term medical- and mental-healthcare costs, the total price ballooned to about $3.1 billion.
It also does not include the cost of hospital readmissions or people who die from gunshot wounds.
And with gun violence on the rise (from 10,945 homicides in 2014 to 12,979 in 2015), experts expect the cost to only increase.
A new study found that $734.6 million was spent treating gunshot victims in the hospital annually. But when accounting for emergency services and long-term healthcare costs, the price rose to $3.1 billion
The study, conducted by the Stanford School of Medicine in California, analyzed data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample of more than 267,000 patients who were admitted for firearm-related injuries during the nine-year period.
It included hospitalization costs of shooting injuries that were self-inflicted, unintentional or due to assault.
Researchers analyzed the severity of their wounds, the cost of their care, where they were hospitalized and how they paid for the hospitalizations.
‘There is a high cost for these injuries, especially because they are preventable,’ said lead author and medical student Sarabeth Spitzer.
Spitzer and her team looked to address two questions for the data: What were the total medical costs when gunshot victims were first hospitalized, and where did the financial burden of medical care fall?
The team found that the government bears about 40 percent of the total costs.
Gun violence victims paid for hospital costs through Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance or out of their pockets, the researchers found.
The patients were overwhelmingly male, and there was a correlation between their insurance status and how they sustained their injuries.
For example, shootings of young and poor individuals insured by Medicaid made up about two-thirds of firearm injuries, and they were most often victims of assault.
By contrast, older Medicare-insured patients were more likely to suffer from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
And the costs don’t end after patients leave the hospital.
‘There’s a cost if you’re readmitted, there’s long-term rehab, and a lot of these patients end up needing long-term health care,’ Spitzer said, adding that she and her colleagues will next analyze the cost of hospital readmissions.
Despite the scale of the problem, there is not a great deal of research on gun violence from a public health perspective.
Spitzer says this is partly because of a measure Congress passed in 1996 that restricts federal funding for firearms research.
Past studies have looked into the total costs of firearm injuries both medically and socially.
A Mother Jones investigation from 2012 estimated that the annual cost of gun violence in America exceeds $229 billion, as much as $3.4 billion including emergency services, police investigations and long-term health care costs.
The actual cost of hospital visits are difficult to determine from these figures, and it is unclear who actually ends up paying for them.
‘Firearm injuries are tied to one of the most controversial political issues in the country, so it is important for all sides to have access to fact-based research,’ Spitzer said.
‘Cost information can be especially helpful when making health policy decisions.’
And a new technique is emerging that could be more effective in treating gunshot victims called cryotherapy.
The process involves replacing all of a patient’s blood with a cold saline solution, which rapidly cools the body and stops almost all cellular activity, dropping it from 98F to 50F.
At normal body temperatures, surgeons typically have less than five minutes to restore blood flow before brain damage occurs.
But by inducing hypothermia, the patient is essentially in suspended animation, buying doctors about an hour to fix injuries that would otherwise be lethal.
After the operation, doctors will use a heart-lung bypass machine with a heat exchanger to return blood to the patient.
The blood will warm the body gradually, which should circumvent injuries that can occur when tissue is suddenly exposed to oxygen after a period of deprivation.
The operation, which pushes the boundaries of conventional surgery, could add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the $734 million figure.