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Benchmarking

Measurement


The measurement of hospital performance is based on the formation of episodes. A care episode is constructed according to the episode algorithm developed specifically for the project.

A care episode designates the treatment process of a patient. It consists of all the admissions and outpatient visits of a patient due to one and the same illness. In consequence, it may be a one-night stay in inpatient care, or it may consist of numerous admissions and outpatient visits, including surgical procedures. The episode forms the basis for various indicators:

- bed days/episode
- outpatient visits/episode
- costs/episode
- hospital productivity
- productivity of hospital departments

Most of the indicators can be viewed from two different viewpoints and at different levels: from the providers' viewpoint at the levels of hospital, speciality and patient group (DRG level) and from the regional viewpoint at hospital-district and municipality levels. The providers' viewpoint implies that the formation of episodes have been restricted to individual hospitals. The regional viewpoint implies that care episodes cross over hospital and hospital-district boundaries, i.e. the episode is not restricted to any single hospital. Care episode formation figure (pdf 40kb)

Productivity is defined as the output divided by input. Using episodes, productivity is measured as the sum of episodes divided by their respective costs. Individual care episodes are weighted by cost weights derived from DRG weights in order to control for the severity of the episode.

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Published 29.12.2005, Updated 2.11.2006

Last updated 2.11.2006
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