Most Expensive Hospitalizations, 2008

Excerpt

This Statistical Brief presents data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) and focuses on differences between discharges in the top 5 percent and bottom 95 percent of total charges as received by the data source in 2008. This Brief also compares discharges in the top 0.5 percent and the next 0.5 percent of total charges to explore whether there are any anomalies in the top percent that suggest measurement error. Differences examined include hospital and patient characteristics, clinical severity, length of stay, number of comorbidities, principal diagnosis, and all-listed procedures. The percentage of suspiciously high charge discharges in the top 1 percent of total charges as submitted by source is also reviewed. All differences between estimates noted in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level or better.