International Journal of Medicine and Pharmacy

More Patients, For More Time and At Higher Costs. In Summary: Unplanned Hospitalization Of Cancer Patients. Is Diagnosis Relate Group (DRG) A Classification System Sensitive to the Severity Of These Hospitalizations Or Not? A photograf of a Single Center
MD. Dr Garipoli Claudia, MD. Dr Salvia Petra, Dr. Albanese Nicolo

Abstract
Reducing emergency hospital admissions is a key goal for all modern health systems. This study aims to describe the nature and extent of this phenomenon and to identify the risk factors related to unplanned repeated presentations in the emergency room with the consequent hospital admissions in medical oncology unit. We analyzed characteristics, diagnosis and costs of the patients admitted to the Medical Oncology- University Hospital , Messina,in one year. The analysis was conducted on the Diagnosis Related Group relating to all hospitalizations treated in the ordinary regime (unplanned and planned) in light of the care complexity and related costs. Our study demonstrated how the length of hospitalization, mortality and the costs of emergency hospitalizations are “poorly rapresented” compared to planned hospitalizations. The same Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) includes groups of patients with different clinical severity and therefore of different care complexity and treatment costs, not contemplating the adjustment of the price to the degree of severity and / or co-morbidity of the patient

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijmp.v11n2a2