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Evaluation of proposed casemix criteria as a basis for costing patients in the adult general intensive care unit
Author(s) -
Stevens V. G.,
Hibbert C. L.,
Edbrooke D. L.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
anaesthesia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.839
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1365-2044
pISSN - 0003-2409
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2044.1998.00576.x
Subject(s) - intensive care unit , medicine , workload , intensive care , activity based costing , isolation (microbiology) , unit (ring theory) , intensive care medicine , emergency medicine , mathematics education , mathematics , marketing , computer science , microbiology and biotechnology , business , biology , operating system
This study analyses the relationship between the actual patient‐related costs of care calculated for 145 patients admitted sequentially to an adult general intensive care unit and a number of factors obtained from a previously described consensus of opinion study. The factors identified in the study were suggested as potential descriptors for the casemix in an intensive care unit that could be used to predict the costs of care. Significant correlations between the costs of care and severity of illness, workload and length of stay were found but these failed to predict the costs of care with sufficient accuracy to be used in isolation to define isoresource groups in the intensive care unit. No associations between intensive care unit mortality, reason for admission and intensive care unit treatments and costs of care were found. Based on these results, it seems that casemix descriptors and isoresource groups for the intensive care unit that would allow costs to be predicted cannot be defined in terms of single factors.