Inpatient Facility Coding & Compliance Alert

AHRQ projections indicate inpatient costs to rise 2 percent every year.

One-third of all healthcare spending is on inpatient hospital care and services, according to a new study released on July 16 from the AAS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Researchers conducted the study as part of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) to identify trends in U.S. hospitals during the past decade. Check out their findings to see how your facility compares with the national averages. 

Here is a quick scoop on the most important trends:

• Average hospital costs for all discharges showed a steady increase at 2 percent per year (2003-2011). Discharge costs increased from $ 9,100 in 2003 to $10,600 in 2011, and are projected to reach $11,000 in 2013. The average cost to surgical facility patients per year shot up to $17,600, further projected to $22,500 in 2013.This was followed by the injury services at $12,000 in 2003. Injury services included accident traumas, fractures, crush injuries and burns as well. The diagnoses associated with injury services included code families 800-999. 

• The numbers of total hospital discharges were almost stable at 37-38 million discharges per year, except for mental health discharges that rose 1.9 percent per year. Medical services had the maximum discharges, with approximately 16 million per year; the surgical, maternal and neonatal services had 8 million discharges per year. The mental health and injury services had the smallest number at 1.8-2 million per year.

• The average hospital stay over the study period stayed surprisingly stable at 4.7 to 4.8 days. The  costs showed an average decrease by -0.1 percent per year in most of the hospital services. However, the maternal and neonatal services were an exception with a  0.6 percent annual increase, from 3.0 days in 2003 to 3.2 days in 2011. 

• The length of stay was longest for mental health services at 7.4 days, followed by 5.8 days for surgical services, and 4.9-5.0 days for medical and injury services. The shortest stay was around 3 days for maternal and neonatal services.

Study subjects: Analysts based their study on data provided from community hospitals (short term, nonfederal, general and other hospitals, not part of or belonging to other institutions such as a prison.). The data represented 305 million inpatient discharges from 47 states. The analysis included the actual number of hospital discharges, meaning a single person who was admitted numerous times was counted each time he was discharged. 

What it means to you: Analysts and policymakers can use the information to evaluate the impact of healthcare improvement efforts. Individual facilities can use the data for future resource planning based on the trends

What hospitals need to do is to take the trends identified by the data and then use hospital specific data for comparative purposes, says Duane C. Abbey, Ph.D., president of Abbey and Abbey Consultants Inc., in Ames, IA. For instance, a hospital may find that their average hospital stay is 10.1 days which is vastly different from the results for this analysis,” he points out. “Hospital analysts can then look at why there is such a difference which then helps with proper strategic planning.”

To know more about the inpatient trends, log on to- http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb175-Hospital-Cost-Utilization-Projections-2013.jsp.