• Liam O'Neill, Franklin Dexter, Sae-Hwan Park, and Richard H Epstein.
• Department of Health Behavior and Health Systems, School of Public Health, University of North Texas - Health Science Center, 3500 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth, TX 76107, United States. Electronic address: liam.oneill@unthsc.edu.
• J Clin Anesth. 2017 Sep 1; 41: 65-70.

Study ObjectiveRecently, there has been interest in activity-based cost accounting for inpatient surgical procedures to facilitate "value based" analyses. Research 10-20years ago, performed using data from 3 large teaching hospitals, found that activity-based cost accounting was practical and useful for modeling surgeons and subspecialties, but inaccurate for individual procedures. We hypothesized that these older results would apply to hundreds of hospitals, currently evaluable using administrative databases.DesignObservational study.SettingState of Texas hospital discharge abstract data for 1st quarter of 2016, 4th quarter of 2015, 1st quarter of 2015, and 4th quarter of 2014.PatientsDischarged from an acute care hospital in Texas with at least 1 major therapeutic ("operative") procedure.MeasurementsCounts of discharges for each procedure or combination of procedures, classified by ICD-10-PCS or ICD-9-CM.Main ResultsAt the average hospital, most surgical discharges were for procedures performed at most once a month at the hospital (54%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 51% to 55%). At the average hospital, approximately 90% of procedures were performed at most once a month at the hospital (93%, CI 93% to 94%). The percentages were insensitive to the quarter of the year. The percentages were 3% to 6% greater with ICD-10-PCS than for the superseded ICD 9 CM.ConclusionsThere are many different procedure codes, and many different combinations of codes, relative to the number of different hospital discharges. Since most procedures at most hospitals are performed no more than once a month, activity-based cost accounting with a sample size sufficient to be useful is impractical for the vast majority of procedures, in contrast to analysis by surgeon and/or subspecialty.Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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