Study on diagnosis-related groups of inpatients′ expenses for respiratory system diseases

Abstract

Objective To explore diagnosis-related groups(DRGs) case mixes and development approaches for medicare expense standard fitting patients with respiratory system diseases in Sichuan province. Methods 280 717 cases of respiratory system diseases were sampled from the homepages of medical records of general hospitals in Sichuan. These cases were grouped by means of the exhaustive chi-square automatic interaction detector in the decision tree model and the medicare costs standard was derived using the relative-ratio weighting coefficient. Results The main classification nodes of respiratory diseases were age and patient clinical complexity level (PCCL). Patients were classified into 158 disease diagnosis related groups, including 122 DRGs of internal medicine and 36 DRGs in surgical medicine. The max relative-ratio weighting coefficient was 14.04 and the min one was 0.29. And the extreme inpatients′ expenses can affect the identification of classification nodes, calculation of relative weighting coefficient and medicare cost standard. Conclusions Large sample size is advantageous in establishing DRGs and calculating the medicare costs standard based on relative-ratio weighting coefficient. It is however imperative to strengthen monitoring on extreme inpatients′ costs and control the homepage quality of medical records. Key words: Respiratory system diseases; Diagnosis-related groups; Medical record homepage; Inpatient′s costs; Decision tree