Measuring severity of illness within diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) has become increasingly important because of the growing need to compare outcomes across providers. In response to these needs, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) has developed a DRG-based severity system as a refinement to its current Medicare DRG structure. As a result of this recent HCFA research, all-payer sev...

Medicare's use of diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) and the resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS) has led to interest in developing a national all-payer system in which insurers use the same payment methods and payment rates. Using data for 81 high-volume DRGs from 457 California hospitals, we conclude that a single set of rates for hospital care would not be appropriate. On average, Medica...

BACKGROUND With the rising incidence as well as the medical expenditure among patients with unstable angina pectoris, the research aimed to investigate the inpatient medical expenditure through the combination of diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) among patients with unstable angina pectoris in a Grade A tertiary hospital to conduct the referential standards of medical costs for the diagnosis. M...

Introduction In 2010, a Belgian study [1] explored the feasibility of introducing all-inclusive case-based payments for Belgian hospitals. In this kind of financing system, hospital services and patient mix are described in a simplified way through Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs). A tariff is fixed in advance for each DRG. DRGs are groups of patients based on economic and clinical homogeneity. ...

This paper discusses a study conducted to identify factors that contributed to increased length of stay for two diagnosis related groups (DRGs) and their consequential impact on nursing salaries. The study shows that three separate clusters of cost drivers (DRG-related, nurse-related, and patient-related) contributed to increased length of stay for DRG 177 (chronic obstructive airways disease) ...

PURPOSE Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) are widely used for a variety of purposes including quality improvement, hospital output measurement and funding. DRGs are a patient classification scheme which provides a means of relating the type of patients a hospital treats (i.e., its casemix) to the costs incurred by the hospital. This is done by classifying patients into mutually exclusive groups b...