An initial study of identifying and controlling episode separations

Abstract

Objective To imitate the process of identifying episode separations,which helps to improve the methodology of control episode separations.Methods Abstracts of inpatient record on all patients discharged from the hospitals in Beijing in 2010 were drawn from Beijing Public Health Information Center.Risk-adjusted by Diagnosis Related Groups-Beijing version (BJ-DRGs),two-weeks readmission rate was calculated at the whole city and hospital levels respectively.Comparing the readmission rate between these two levels,“suspicious objects”of episode separations can be found.In turn,the episode separations can be identified by detail analysis of these suspicious objects.Results In 2010,there were 13 DRGs with readmission rate exceeding 10％.Take the cases of dementia and other chronic brain disorders for example,the readmission rate for this type of inpatients in hospital G was much higher than the average level of the whole city.After the detail analysis of hospital G,the episode separations were found.Conclusion It is an effective method to indentify episode separations that calculating readmission rate based on the DRG risk-adjustment and using city level readmission rate as bench-mark. Key words: Episode separations; Evaluation; Diagnosis related groups(DRGs)