Background: Pregnancy alone leads to more use of healthcare services and when pregnant women have disabilities like spinal cord injury (SCI) or paralysis, the healthcare utilization can be even more. The purpose of this research study was to evaluate the impact of SCI/paralysis on the inpatient department healthcare utilization of pregnant women compared to the inpatient department healthcare utilization of pregnant women without SCI/paralysis in the United States.

Methods: We used the National Inpatient Sample from 2006 through 2019. Outcome variables were length of hospital stay and total hospitalization charges. Independent variables included patient demographics, socioeconomic status, and hospital characteristics. We employed propensity-score kernel matching to determine the impact of SCI/paralysis on the healthcare services utilization for inpatient hospitalization encounters of pregnant women.

Results: The total inpatient encounters of pregnant women with SCI/paralysis and without SCI/paralysis were 3,174 and 7,732,029, respectively. The average length of hospital stay among pregnant women with SCI/paralysis was 7.74 days (+/- 14.88) whereas for those without SCI/paralysis was 2.87 days (+/- 3.01). The average treatment effect suggested that the pregnant women with SCI/paralysis have on average, a length of stay about three days longer and a total hospitalization charge approximately $30,393.23 more than those without SCI/paralysis.

Conclusions: The results can be used as a starting point by healthcare providers to stratify the risks for pregnant women with SCI/paralysis based on their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics to make informed decisions regarding the need for healthcare policies for this population.