The Diagnosis Related Group classification has provided an excellent basis for enhancing the equity of resource allocation between public acute hospitals. However, it underestimates the higher levels of severity and consequent costliness of referral hospitals. This paper describes a practical way of measuring within-DRG variations in severity, which can be used to increase the precision of case...

209 Yet, disease staging is not without its disadvantages. Certain diseases cannot be staged.210 No actual statistical measures of resource consumption are utilized in categorizing patients.21 ' Disease staging also ignores concurrent conditions and patient-related variables which affect resource consumption.21 2 Disease staging may prove very useful in the refinement needed within the diagnost...

In 2004 reimbursement policies of hospitals based on Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) have been introduced in Germany. These force hospitals to minimize cost of treatment and improve quality of care, in order to attract more patients and become more competitive. To achieve these goals hospital processes have to be optimized and compared with processes in competing hospitals. For this analysis, c...

Endocannabinoids (EC), particularly anandamide (AEA), released constitutively in pain pathways might be accountable for the inhibitory effect on nociceptors. Pathogenesis of neuropathic pain may reflect complex remodeling of the dorsal root ganglia (DRGs) and spinal cord EC system. Multiple pathways involved both in the biosynthesis and degradation of AEA have been suggested. We investigated th...

PURPOSE As several years have passed since the implementation of the Korean diagnosis-related group (DRG) payment system for appendicitis, its early outcomes should be assessed to determine if further improvements are warranted. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed clinical data from Korean patients who underwent appendectomy, dividing the sample into 2 groups of those who received services be...

The German health care system has been based on the Hospital Financing Act, which the German government introduced in 1972. According to that, the federal states plan hospitals and make investments. The health insurance funds finance the operating costs. But now the Hospital Financing Act is obsolete, because both the health insurance funds and the federal states are in financial trouble and tr...

Across the DRGs studied, the average allowed amounts varied, ranging from around $5,000 (DRG 312 in 2010; Table 1) to over $30,000 (DRG 247 in 2014; Table 2). In the population covered by ESI, the average allowed amount for each DRG studied was Growing interest in health care price transparency has led to research focused on the impact of consumers “shopping” for health care.1 Less attention ha...

Using non-blinded methodology, this study checked the coding of acute leukaemia, non-acute leukaemia and lymphoma episodes assigned to the AR-DRGs R60 A, B, C and R61 A, B during the fiscal year 2000-2001 at a Sydney teaching hospital. The purpose was to investigate whether the assignment of fewer episodes of these diseases to the highest complexity AR-DRGs during that year compared to 1999-200...

The escalating cost of medical care in most industrial countries has given impetus to several different strat egies designed to impose limitations on cost and introduce efficiency into health care systems. In the United States of America, legislation was passed in 1983 to introduce a system of prospective payment for Medicare hospital expenditures. This change was a departure from the previous ...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the trend of the incidence and costs of hip fractures in Italy. METHODS The incidence of hip fractures after 45 years of age in both females and males during the years 1999-2002 was obtained by analyzing the Italian Ministry of Health national hospitalization database, according to the diagnosis codes of International Classification of Diseases...