OBJECTIVE Compare clinical outcomes and costs in a study group of long-term acute care hospital (LTCH) patients with a control group of LTCH-eligible patients in an acute care hospital. LTCHs were created to provide post-acute care services not available at other post-acute settings. This is based on the premise that these patients would otherwise have stayed at acute care hospitals as high-cos...

The adoption by Medicare in 1983 of prospective payment using diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) has stimulated research to develop case-mix grouping schemes that more accurately predict resource consumption by patients. In this article, the authors explore a new method designed to improve case-mix classification for newborns through the use of birth weight in combination with DRGs to adjust the u...

The selection of cohorts from national and state databases in Australia usually relies on patient diagnoses according to International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes and/or Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs). The aim of this study was to select a specific cohort consisting of stroke and transient ischaemic attack (TIA) episodes, thereby allowing the researcher to examine current process of ...

Capital investment is a major concern for public hospitals. Relative to operating expenditures, it has been almost constant for 40 years, despite great changes in technology and patient throughputs. Research studies during the last decade suggest that over that time almost all investment has been on simply replacing existing assets. Per person, the total capital stock has actually declined. How...

Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) are currently being introduced on a national scale as a prospective reimbursement scheme in Swiss in-patient hospital care, replacing any remaining retrospective day-rate arrangements. DRGs are expected to promote transparency and efficiency while helping to contain health care costs. The governmental decision to introduce DRGs has caused considerable controversy...

INTRODUCTION Jehovah's witnesses refuse blood transfusions. The conflict arises when the patient, entitled to public health treatment, come to surgical centres without blood, to later claim the costs incurred. OBJECTIVES To analyse the legal claims for the refunding of costs by Jehovah's witnesses treated outside the public health system. To make a cost comparison regarding this, using Diagno...

The German hospital market has been subject over the past two decades to a variety of healthcare reforms. Particularly the introduction of diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) in 2004 aimed to increase efficiency of hospitals. The objective of the paper is to review recent studies comparing the efficiency of German public, private non-profit and private for-profit hospitals. The results of the studi...

182 Physician Payment Policy in the 101st Congress Paul B. Ginsburg The Medicare Physician Fee Freeze Janet B. Mitchell, Gerard Wedig, and Jerry Cromwell Prospective Payment to Medical Staffs: A Proposal W. Pete Welch A Competitive Bidding Approach to Physician Payment Jeffrey S. McCombs Medicare Mandatory Assignment: An Unnecessary Risk? John Holahan and Stephen Zuckerman Paying Physicians in ...

In 2000, Germany selected the Australian DRG system as a base for a national standard German version (now called German DRGs, or simply G-DRGs). No serious consideration has been given thus far to major changes in the classification, because there are many practical issues that must be addressed within a short time-scale, given the German federal government’s requirement that per case payment b...