Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to J E Conklin.
Patient severity, and its measurement, has become a central issue in understanding the interrelationships and trade-offs between costs and quality. This article offers a balanced framework within which all severity-measurement systems can be evaluated.
A Disease Staging system is described that defines patient-level severity of illness and is an efficient DRG enhancement tool. Not only is it highly predictive of resource use, it is also valid, reliable, and easy to interpret. Examples of its use in analyzing hospital costs are provided, and a current bibliography of research involving Disease Staging is presented.
The current patient classification schemes used in case-mix reimbursement are not fully sensitive to variations in resource consumption that are associated with differential disease severity. Disease staging is a clinically based measure of severity that uses objective medical criteria to assess the stage of disease progression. Its availability in automated form increases its ease of implementation in hospital reimbursement and management. Results of recent studies demonstrate that staging is a useful case-mix reimbursement and management tool that explains significant variation in cost per discharge within current diagnosis-related groups.
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