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Hospital Length of Stay of Frail Elderly Patients: Primary Care by General Internists versus Geriatricians
Author(s) -
Pawlson L. Gregory
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
journal of the american geriatrics society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.992
H-Index - 232
eISSN - 1532-5415
pISSN - 0002-8614
DOI - 10.1111/j.1532-5415.1988.tb01801.x
Subject(s) - medicine , geriatrics , reimbursement , emergency medicine , family medicine , health care , psychiatry , economics , economic growth
Hospitalized patients in a medical diagnosis‐related group (DRG) who were cared for by physicians in a division of Geriatric Medicine (geriatric group) were compared with a control group drawn from a stratified random sample of patients cared for by general internists (internist group) in the same hospital. Despite an older age, longer predicted length of stay, and higher DRG reimbursement, the geriatric group patients had a significantly shorter length of stay (8.8 vs 15.8 days; P < 0.05) than the internist group. A shorter length of stay for the geriatric group was noted in each of five subgroups, sorted by admission and discharge status. Comparison to national data reveals that, despite the shorter length of stay in the geriatric group, length of stay data used by hospitals for management purposes would still classify the patients of the geriatrics group as “revenue losers” under the Medicare hospital reimbursement system.