PATIENT CLASSIFICATION AND HOSPITAL COSTS OF CARE FOR STROKE IN 10 EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Mikko Peltola and on behalf of the EuroDRG Group

Health Economics, 2012, vol. 21, issue S2, 129-140

Abstract: Stroke is a major cause of death and disability around the world, and the care of stroke patients ties up a great amount of resources in healthcare systems. Stroke severity and the given care may vary substantially between patients, and there is remarkable variation in both the costs and length of stay (LoS) of stroke patients. Using patient level data from 10 European countries on costs and LoS, we explored the ability of the diagnosis‐related group (DRG) systems to explain variance in the costs and length of stay of stroke patients. In addition, we evaluated whether the existing DRGs for stroke patients would benefit from additional patient‐related and treatment‐related factors that are commonly found in the administrative databases across countries. Cost analyses were run using OLS fixed effects models, and LoS analyses with negative binomial models. The descriptive statistics showed that the stroke patients differ remarkably across countries. Large variations in the classification of stroke patients raise concerns about whether all systems rely on the most appropriate classification variables. In all the countries, the DRG classifications' performance could be improved with the introduction of the patient characteristics analysed here. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.2841

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:129-140

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 ().