Estimating mean hospital cost as a function of length of stay and patient characteristics

Elena Polverejan, Joseph C. Gardiner, Cathy J. Bradley, Margaret Holmes‐Rovner and David Rovner

Health Economics, 2003, vol. 12, issue 11, 935-947

Abstract: Statistical models have been used to assess the influence of clinical and demographic factors on hospital charge and length of stay (LOS). Hospital costs constitute a significant proportion of overall expenditure in health care. With escalating costs, knowing the correlates of LOS and in‐hospital cost is important for decisions on allocating resources. However, hospital charge and LOS are correlated. We describe two regression models that permit estimation of mean charges as a function of patient hospital stay and adjust for the influence of patient characteristics and treatment procedures on LOS and charge. In the first model, the mean charge over a specified duration is a weighted average of the expected cumulative charge, with weighting determined by the distribution of LOS. The second model for LOS and charge explicitly accounts for their correlation and yields estimates of the average charge per average LOS. The methods are applied to assess mean charges and mean charge per day by cardiac procedure in a cohort of patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction, while adjusting for the impact of patient demographic and clinical factors on LOS and charge. For relatively short hospital stays, and when only total hospital charges are available, these models provide a flexible approach to estimating summary measures on resource use while controlling for the effects of covariates on LOS and charge. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.774

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:12:y:2003:i:11:p:935-947

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 ().