• Bmc Health Serv Res · Aug 2009

    Direct costs associated with the appropriateness of hospital stay in elderly population.

    • Joaquín F Mould-Quevedo, Carmen García-Peña, Iris Contreras-Hernández, Teresa Juárez-Cedillo, Claudia Espinel-Bermúdez, Gabriela Morales-Cisneros, and Sergio Sánchez-García.
    • Departamento de Negocios Internacionales, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, México, D.F., México. jfmq@alu.ua.es
    • Bmc Health Serv Res. 2009 Aug 22; 9: 151.

    BackgroundAgeing of Mexican population implies greater demand of hospital services. Nevertheless, the available resources are used inadequately. In this study, the direct medical costs associated with the appropriateness of elderly populations hospital stay are estimated.MethodsAppropriateness of hospital stay was evaluated with the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP). Direct medical costs associated with hospital stay under the third-party payer's institutional perspective were estimated, using as information source the clinical files of 60 years of age and older patients, hospitalized during year 2004 in a Regional Hospital from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), in Mexico City.ResultsThe sample consisted of 724 clinical files, with a mean of 5.3 days (95% CI = 4.9-5.8) of hospital stay, of which 12.4% (n = 90) were classified with at least one inappropriate patient day, with a mean of 2.2 days (95% CI = 1.6-2.7). The main cause of inappropriateness days was the inexistence of a diagnostic and/or treatment plan, 98.9% (n = 89). The mean cost for an appropriate hospitalization per patient resulted in US$1,497.2 (95% CI = US$323.2-US$4,931.4), while the corresponding mean cost for an inappropriate hospitalization per patient resulted in US$2,323.3 (95% CI = US$471.7-US$6,198.3), (p < 0.001).ConclusionElderly patients who were inappropriately hospitalized had a higher rate of inappropriate patient days. The average of inappropriate patient days cost is considerably higher than appropriate days. In this study, inappropriate hospital-stay causes could be attributable to physicians and current organizational management.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…