[Analysis and assessment of hospital length of stay by the medical service]

Abstract

New German social legislation has considerably widened the scope of activities and responsibilities of the Medical Advisory Service of the German Compulsory Sickness Insurance Bodies. One of the consequences of the rapid rise in the cost of inpatient care is that compulsory sickness insurance bodies in germany must consult the Medical Advisor much more often than before. Inpatient care cost is of course most closely related to the patient's length of stay in hospital. If suitable data are available, the stay in hospital can be analysed and assessed by correlating the data with several factors such as diagnosis and age of the patients, proportion of patients of short stay, tracer diagnoses, special departments, outputs, costs and prices. Assessment of the length of stay involves the structure of the patients and comparing hospitals with one another. This leads to results that help the sickness insurance bodies in deciding on budget demands made by hospitals, and in clarifying the extent to which hospitals are genuinely in need of help (utilisation of or shortage of bed capacity, for example) and in gaining an insight into the economy with which a hospital is being run.