Financial Risk and Hospital Cost for Elderly Patients
- 1 April 1988
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Medical Association (AMA) in Archives of internal medicine (1960)
- Vol. 148 (4) , 909-912
- https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.1988.00380040149021
Abstract
• The purpose of this study was to analyze hospital resource consumption for Medicare patients in non—age- and age-stratified medical diagnosis related groups (DRGs). This study of patients in 74 non—age-stratified DRGs (N = 3643) and 113 age-stratified DRGs (N = 2898) demonstrated that older medical patients (usually ≥75 to 80 years of age) had (on average) higher total hospital costs, a longer hospital length of stay, more diagnoses per patient, a greater percentage of outliers, and a higher mortality compared with younger patients in these same DRGs. These findings raise the question of the equity of DRG payment vis-à-vis older Medicare patients in both non—age- and age-stratified medical DRGs. Financial disincentives to treat older medical patients may limit both their access and quality of care in the future. (Arch Intern Med1988;148:909-912)This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: