[Hospital Costs of Ambulatory Care-Sensitive Conditions in Germany]. 2016

D Fischbach
Technische Universität Berlin, Fachgebiet Management im Gesundheitswesen, Berlin.

Ambulatory care-sensitive conditions (ACSC) are defined as conditions that lead to a hospital admission of which the onset could have been prevented through a more easily accessible ambulatory sector or one that provides better quality care. They are used by health-care systems as a quality indicator for the ambulatory sector. The definition for ACSC varies internationally. Sets of conditions have been defined and evaluated already in various countries, e. g., USA, England, New Zealand and Canada, but not yet for Germany. Therefore this study aims to evaluate the hospital costs of ACSC in Germany using the National Health Service's set of ACSC. In order to calculate these costs a model has been set up for the time period between 2003 and 2010. It is based on G-DRG browsers issued by the German Institute for the Hospital Remuneration System as required by German law. Within these browsers all relevant DRG-ICD combinations have been extracted. The number of cases per combination was then multiplied by their corresponding cost weights and the average effective base rates. The results were then aggregated into their corresponding ICD groups and then into their respective conditions which lead to the costs per condition and the total costs. The total number of cases and total costs were then compared to another second source. These calculations resulted in 11.7 million cases, of which 10.7% were defined as ambulatory care-sensitive. Within the analysed time period the number of ambulatory care-sensitive cases increased by 6% in total and had a 0.9% CAGR. The corresponding costs amounted to a total of EUR 37.6B and to EUR 3.3B for ACSC. 60% of the costs were caused by three of the 19 ACSC. These results validate that it is worthwhile to further investigate this quality indicator for the ambulatory sector.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D007223 Infant A child between 1 and 23 months of age. Infants
D007231 Infant, Newborn An infant during the first 28 days after birth. Neonate,Newborns,Infants, Newborn,Neonates,Newborn,Newborn Infant,Newborn Infants
D008297 Male Males
D008875 Middle Aged An adult aged 45 - 64 years. Middle Age
D002648 Child A person 6 to 12 years of age. An individual 2 to 5 years old is CHILD, PRESCHOOL. Children
D002675 Child, Preschool A child between the ages of 2 and 5. Children, Preschool,Preschool Child,Preschool Children
D005260 Female Females
D005858 Germany A country in central Europe, bordering the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, between the Netherlands and Poland, south of Denmark. The capital is Berlin.
D006760 Hospitalization The confinement of a patient in a hospital. Hospitalizations
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man

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