Measuring severity of illness: Comparisons across institutions

S.D. Horn

American Journal of Public Health, 1983, vol. 73, issue 1, 25-31

Abstract: Conventional methods for classifying patients with respect to utilization of health care resources are based almost exclusively on diagnostic criteria. We review a new severity of illness index which is genetic to most medical and surgical conditions in a hospital, and which has been found to produce subgroups of patients more homogeneous with respect to hospital resource use (as assessed by total charges, length of stay, routine charges, and laboratory charges) than diagnostic-related groups, staging, and generalized patient management paths. We use the severity of illness groups to compare total charges and length of stay across hospitals. We find that charges and length of stay in an academic teaching hospital are similar to those in community hospitals with and without teaching programs when controlling for severity of illness.

Date: 1983
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1983:73:1:25-31_3

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Alfredo Morabia

More articles in American Journal of Public Health from American Public Health Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().