title: A hierarchical Poisson mixture regression model to analyse maternity length of hospital stay.
abstract: Inpatient length of stay (LOS) is often considered as a proxy of hospital resource consumption. Using statewide obstetrical delivery data, a two-component Poisson mixture model provides a reasonable fit to the heterogeneous LOS distribution. Adopting the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) approach, random effects are introduced to the two-component Poisson mixture regression model to account for the inherent correlation of patients clustered within hospitals. An EM algorithm is developed for the joint estimation of regression coefficients and variance component parameters. Related diagnostic measures for assessing model adequacy are derived. When applying the method to analyse maternity LOS, appropriate risk factors for the short-stay and long-stay subgroups can be identified from the respective Poisson components. In addition, predicted random hospital effects enable the comparison of relative efficiencies among hospitals after adjustment for patient case-mix and health provision characteristics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U 1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Kelvin K W
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Yau
authors.forename: Andy H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D015331:Cohort Studies; D036861:Delivery, Obstetric; D003953:Diagnosis-Related Groups / Q000191:economics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007902:Length of Stay; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D011181:Postnatal Care; D011247:Pregnancy; D012044:Regression Analysis; D014904:Western Australia