Diagnosis-related group analysis of hospital stay variability in diabetics

The French hospital reform requires the development of different activities indicators which may be utilized by hospitals in order to negociate reorga nizations and redistributions. The French-DRG's classification is a useful tool in this type of negociation as it allows the description of an activit y and the evaluation of its budget. Nevertheless, it is insufficient in tak ing into account high-cost patients. The clinical characterization of high- cost subgroups completes the DRG description. We studied the length of stay s of 801 discharge reports of thp 418 French DRG "diabetes, age > 36 years" of the Amiens University Hospital for 1996. It showed that this DRG is mad e up of 3 subgroups, of which rite most costly gathers 14% of all patients. Criteria which were significantly linked with this third subgroup were: th e number of comorbidities by RSS and the number of diabetes complications b y RSS.