PATIENT CLASSIFICATION AND HOSPITAL COSTS OF CARE FOR ACUTE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION IN NINE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Unto Häkkinen, Pietro Chiarello, Francesc Cots, Mikko Peltola, Hanna Rättö and On Behalf Of The Eurodrg Group

Health Economics, 2012, vol. 21, issue S2, 19-29

Abstract: This study contributes to the literature on the performance of diagnosis‐related groups (DRGs) for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients by evaluating in nine countries the factors—in addition to DRGs—that affect costs or length of stay and comparing the variation that can be explained with or without DRGs. We evaluate whether the existing DRGs for AMI patients would benefit from additional patient‐related and treatment‐related factors that are found in administrative data across countries. In most countries, the set of patient and quality variables performed better than the DRG variables. Our results suggest that DRG systems in all countries could be improved by including additional explanatory factors or by refining the existing DRGs. Our results suggest that for AMI and possibly for other related episodes, a refinement of DRGs to include information on patient severity, procedures and levels of complications could improve the ability of DRGs to explain resource use. It seems possible to improve DRG‐like hospital payment systems through the inclusion of episode‐specific variables. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.2840

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:wly:hlthec:v:21:y:2012:i:s2:p:19-29

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().