Duke University Researcher Discusses Findings in Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine (Paying to pee: A national survey of urinary catheter users’ costs and coverage): Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Medicine – Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine

2025 NOV 27 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Research findings on pediatric rehabilitation medicine are discussed in a new report. According to news reporting out of Durham, North Carolina, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “This study aimed to survey individuals who regularly use urinary catheters to understand health insurance coverage and out-of-pocket costs they experience to advocate for health-policy change. Survey content was generated by non-profit organizations and programmed into Qualtrics.”

The news editors obtained a quote from the research from Duke University: “It was distributed in Spanish and English via email and social media accounts. The survey was open from 1/19/21-2/15/21 and only included individuals who either used catheters themselves or were the care partner of an individual who used catheters. For non-normally distributed data, log-transformed confidence intervals were used to achieve approximately normal distributions; data was then transformed to be analyzed using an approximate 95% confidence interval (CI), and a Mann-Whitney U test was completed to test the equality of medians between groups. Associations between catheter types and out-of-pocket costs were performed using the Kruskal-Wallace non-parametric test. One thousand two hundred and forty seven individuals responded. An equal percentage (43%) of catheter users were covered by public/government or private insurance plans only; 14% had both. Among those with public/government insurance, 8% reported their insurance did not cover any catheter costs versus 17% of those with private insurance. The median yearly out-of-pocket costs for privately insured respondents who paid anything was $1200 compared to $540 for those with public/government insurance.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Out-of-pocket expenses for catheters vary. Those with public/government insurance pay less out-of-pocket.”

For more information on this research see: Paying to pee: A national survey of urinary catheter users’ costs and coverage. Journal of Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine, 2024,17(4). The publisher for Journal of Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine is SAGE Publications.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/18758894241299901.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Maryellen S. Kelly, Division of Healthcare of Women and Children, School of Nursing, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States. Additional authors for this research include Hannah Damico, Dawne Widener-Burrows, Judy Thibadeau, Kimberly A. Beer, Alexandra Bennewith, Jane M. Wierbicky, Sara Struwe.

ORCID is an identifier for authors and includes bibliographic information. The following is ORCID information for the author of this research: Maryellen S. Kelly (http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7733-8569).

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