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EuroDRG
[1]
- © EuroDRG
Diagnosis-Related Groups in Europe:
towards
Efficiency and Quality
Background
Payment mechanisms represent one of the fundamental
building blocks of any health system, introducing powerful incentives
for actors in the system and fierce technical design complexities.
Inpatient case payments, mainly referred to as Diagnose Related Groups
(DRGs), are nowadays used as a payment mechanism with ambitious aims:
they seek to reimburse providers fairly for the work they undertake,
but intend to encourage efficient delivery and to discourage the
provision of unnecessary services and thereby target to overcome some
of the drawbacks of more traditional hospital reimbursement. A case
payment system that fulfils these hopes requires carefully balanced
incentives as well as a methodologically sound system. Especially,
DRGs need to accurately reflect the resources and costs of treating a
given patient.
The project
Fierce
debate among practitioners, researchers and the public indicates that
case payments still pose considerable technical and policy challenges,
and many unresolved issues in their implementation remain. For Example
the HealthBASKET, project showed that the adoption of DRG systems
differs greatly between European Member States. One of the key
conclusions of HealthBASKET was that structural components may play an
even more important role than heterogeneity of treatment patters in
cost variations within an episode of care. In this context, many
European DRG systems may be heading in the wrong direction by
concentrating almost exclusively on further developing the medical
classification of DRGs. In addition over the last decade the
Europeanization of health services markets generated additional
pressure on national reimbursement systems by adding complexity via
increased patient mobility and health system interconnectedness.
The EuroDRG project scrutinises these challenges. Part one
concentrates on the complexities of case payments for hospitals in
general. Special emphasis is put on identifying those factors, which
are crucial for (1) calculating adequate case payments, (2) examining
hospital efficiency within countries and across Europe fairly and (3)
study the relationship between costs and the quality of care provided
in hospitals. The project uses comparative analyses of DRG systems
across 10 European countries embedded in various types of health
systems (Austria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands,
Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK). The second part of the project
seeks to identify pan-European issues in hospital case payment and
includes conducting efficiency analysis across European countries,
establishing a European hospital benchmarking club as well as
identifying those systemic factors, which will be crucial for
successful policy design in a slowly emerging pan-European hospital
market.
Links and Documents
-
project flyer: _ [2]
- detailed projekt description: _
[3]
- latest information around the project:
www.eurodrg.eu [4]
EuroDRG final
conference, 17. November 2011, Berlin, Germany
The EuroDRG project (www.eurodrg.eu [5]) will finish with
a final conference in November
2011, where the main results of the research project
will be presented and discussed with
policy-makers, researchers and stakeholders from Europe and
beyond.
Venue: NH Hotel Berlin Friedrichstrasse,
Berlin, Germany
Fees: The conference is free of charge
Accommodation: Participants are expected to make their own hotel arrangements
Registration: Please register until 31st of October
2011: email [6]
s/logos/EuroDRG_80h.jpg
roDRG/EuroDRG_Brochure_V1.pdf
roDRG/EuroDRG_Project_Description.pdf
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k_mail=YA5JEAAEVazQgVCGxFEfmxHjh7K0xWDx&ask_name=MI
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