Comparison of cost accounting methods from different DRG systems and their effect on health care quality.
BACKGROUND
Diagnosis related groups (DRGs) are a well-established provider payment system. Because of their imminent potential of cost reduction, they have been widely introduced. In addition to cost cutting, several social objectives - e.g., improving overall health care quality - feed into the DRG system.


OBJECTIVE
The WHO compared different provider payment systems with regard to the following objectives: prevention of further health problems, providing services and solving health problems, and responsiveness to people's legitimate expectations. However, no study has been published which takes the impact of different cost accounting systems across the DRG systems into account.


METHODS
We compared the impact of different cost accounting methods within DRG-like systems by developing six criteria: integration of patients' health risk into pricing practice, incentives for quality improvement and innovation, availability of high class evidence based therapy, prohibition of economically founded exclusions, reduction of fragmentation incentives, and improvement of patient oriented treatment.


RESULTS
We set up a first overview of potential and actual impacts of the pricing practices within Yale-DRGs, AR-DRGs, G-DRGs, Swiss AP-DRGs adoption and Swiss MIPP. It could be demonstrated that DRGs are not only a 'homogenous' group of similar provider payment systems but quite different by fulfilling major health care objectives connected with the used cost accounting methods.


CONCLUSIONS
If not only the possible cost reduction is used to put in a good word for DRG-based provider payment systems, maximum accurateness concerning the method of cost accounting should prevail when implementing a new DRG-based provider payment system.
Leister
Jan Eric
JE
Medical Faculty, University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, Hufelandstr. 55, 45122 Essen, Germany.
Stausberg
Jürgen
J
D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D003953:Diagnosis-Related Groups / Q000191:economics*; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D014944:World Health Organization