Jacqueline O'Reilly

Diagnosis related groups in Europe : moving towards transparency, efficiency, and quality in hospitals?

Hospitals in most European countries are paid on the basis of diagnosis related groups. Reinhard Busse and colleagues find much variation within and between systems and argue that they could be improved if countries learnt from each other

A cost effectiveness analysis within a randomised controlled trial of post-acute care of older people in a community hospital

Abstract Objective To assess the cost effectiveness of post-acute care for older people in a locality based community hospital compared with a department for care of elderly people in a district general hospital, which admits patients aged over 76 years with acute medical conditions. Design Cost effectiveness analysis within a randomised controlled trial. Setting Community hospital and district general hospital in Yorkshire, England. Participants 220 patients needing rehabilitation after an acute illness for which they required admission to hospital. Interventions Multidisciplinary care in the district general hospital or prompt transfer to the community hospital. Main outcome measures EuroQol EQ-5D scores transformed into quality adjusted life years (QALYs), and health and social service costs over six months from randomisation. Results The mean QALY score for the community hospital group was marginally non-significantly higher than that for the district general hospital group (0.38 v 0.35) at six months after recruitment. The mean (standard deviation) costs per patient of the health and social services resources used were similar for both groups: community hospital group £7233 (euros 10 567;

Performance Of 10 European Drg Systems In Explaining Variation In Resource Utilisation In Inguinal Hernia Repair

13 341) (£5031), district general hospital group £7351 (£6229), and these findings were robust to several sensitivity analyses. The incremental cost effectiveness ratio for community hospital care dominated. A cost effectiveness acceptability curve, based on bootstrapped simulations, suggests that at a willingness to pay threshold of £10 000 per QALY, 51% of community hospital cases will be cost effective, which rises to 53% of cases when the threshold is £30 000 per QALY. Conclusion Post-acute care for older people in a locality based community hospital is of similar cost effectiveness to that of an elderly care department in a district general hospital.

Who's that sleeping in my bed? Potential and actual utilization of public and private in-patient beds in Irish acute public hospitals

By classifying hospital output into groups of patients with similar clinical characteristics and resource requirements, diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) are designed to be highly correlated with resource utilisation. Using a two-stage approach to control for variation within and between hospitals, we examine the ability of the diverse DRG systems in 10 European countries to explain variability in resource utilisation (costs or length of stay, LoS) for hospital patients undergoing surgical repair of inguinal hernia. Our national regression results suggest that DRGs are statistically significant in explaining cost/LoS variation in the absence of any other regressors and generally remain so in most countries when patient-level characteristics are added to the model. However patient-level characteristics, including those used in DRG assignment, are usually also statistically significant. In nine countries, where the number of relevant DRGs ranges from two (Poland) to seven (France), the inclusion of patient-level characteristics substantially improves model goodness-of-fit compared with that attained with DRGs alone. Only in Sweden is the converse true. If our analysis raises some concerns over the adequacy of DRGs to explain cost/LoS variation in inguinal hernia repair in nine of the 10 European countries, further research is required to consider whether future enhancements may be necessary.

Post-acute care for older people in community hospitals—a cost-effectiveness analysis within a multi-centre randomised controlled trial

Objective: To examine the impact of the unusual public/private mix on public and private in-patient bed utilization within Irish acute public hospitals. Methods: Data from the Department of Health and Children and the Hospital In-Patient Enquiry were used to estimate and compare potential and actual utilization of public and private designated in-patient beds in 54 acute public hospitals from 2000 to 2004. Results: Private in-patients used more bed days than were potentially available to them in 14.1% of hospital-year observations. The equivalent figure for public in-patients was 12.6%. Although the prevalence of excess utilization of private beds was relatively small, it did increase over the study period. Hospitals with excess private utilization were characterized by a relatively low proportion of private- or non-designated beds despite their patient profile being broadly similar to that of hospitals where there was no excess private utilization. Conclusions: Despite policies designed to limit private practice in Irish acute public hospitals, some hospitals have apparently been able to overcome these restrictions. In a system where financial incentives to treat private patients exist both for consultants and hospitals, it is not clear whether this excess private practice in public hospitals reflects a more efficient utilization of resources (when demand from public patients is low) or the displacement of public patients in favour of private patients. However, that a smaller number on hospital waiting lists possess private health insurance provides some support for the displacement hypothesis. Thus, it appears that policy-makers may need to reconsider attempts to ensure an appropriate division of acute public hospital resources between public and private patients.