Philadelphia leads state in child-cancer hospital admissions, report shows

Nearly a third of child-cancer hospital admissions in Pennsylvania between 2021 and 2023 were among children from the Philadelphia area, data from a new report shows.

Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties reported 2,400 child-cancer hospital admissions during the three-year period. Of those, 1,092 admissions were among children from Philadelphia.

Statewide, there were 7,954 hospital admissions among children ages 17 years or younger who had a cancer diagnosis, according to data from a new report by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, or PHC4, an independent group that tracks health-care utilization in the state.

The data tracks admissions and not patients — every child can be admitted more than once. It does not include Pennsylvania children who sought treatment at out-of-state hospitals.

“Monitoring the number of cancer-related hospitalizations for children in Pa. is vital for raising awareness on how children, our greatest asset, and their families are affected by this terrible disease,” said Jane Keck, PHC4′s director of health research, in a statement.

Young children were more likely than teenagers to be hospitalized for cancer. A third of the admissions were for children under 4 years old, while less than 20% of admissions were patients 15 to 17 years old.

White patients accounted for the majority of hospitalizations.

Leukemia, metastatic, skin, and brain cancers were among the most common.

Philadelphia had both the most admissions and the highest rate among its suburbs. Montgomery County had the second-highest number of hospitalizations, 450, and Bucks County had the second-highest rate, 28.4 per 10,000 children.