Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-5-2009

Publication Title

BioMed Central Health Services Research

Abstract

Within many diagnosis related group (DRG) systems, there is recognition that a single cost weight per DRG is not suitable, and that cost weights should take into account extremely lengthy hospital stays. Long lengths of stay are considered to be due to factors largely beyond the control of the hospital, and a single weight per DRG would potentially place hospitals under financial risk.

Within Canada's acute-care, inpatient grouping methodology - Case Mix Groups (CMG+) - long-stay episodes represent approximately 4.5% of all discharges. Within a CMG (analogous to DRG), the cost weight assigned to long-stay cases consists of the typical cost weight, plus a per diem for each day the case stays beyond the CMG mean.

Within a CMG, the volume of long-stay records may be low, and the episode cost data highly variable. This results in per diem estimates of low precision. In this paper, we compare two methods for calculating long-stay per diems. We employ Bayesian methods for sparse data, and compare the results to those of the current frequentist approach.

DOI

10.1186/1472-6963-9-S1-A1

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