PMID- 20037768
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20110106
LR  - 20211020
IS  - 1618-7601 (Electronic)
IS  - 1618-7598 (Linking)
VI  - 11
IP  - 4
DP  - 2010 Aug
TI  - Substituting inpatient for outpatient care: what is the impact on hospital costs 
      and efficiency?
PG  - 395-404
LID - 10.1007/s10198-009-0211-0 [doi]
AB  - Substitution of inpatient for outpatient care is seen as a means to increase 
      patient throughput and control costs. The purpose of this study was to assess the 
      impact of increased outpatient care on hospital costs and efficiency using 
      Finnish specialty-level data from years 2003-2006 to which we applied stochastic 
      frontier analysis. The results reveal that outpatient services have a smaller 
      impact on total costs than inpatient services. At the same time, increased 
      outpatient activity appears to have an adverse effect on estimated cost 
      efficiency. This counterintuitive finding is probably due to the low weight given 
      to outpatient activities by the Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG) system. A common 
      weighting for inpatient and outpatient services is required in order to assess 
      accurately the impact of outpatient care on efficiency.
FAU - Vitikainen, Kirsi
AU  - Vitikainen K
AD  - Centre for Health and Social Economics (CHESS), National Institute for Health and 
      Welfare (THL), P.O. Box 30, Helsinki, 00271, Finland. kirsi.vitikainen@thl.fi
FAU - Linna, Miika
AU  - Linna M
FAU - Street, Andrew
AU  - Street A
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
PL  - Germany
TA  - Eur J Health Econ
JT  - The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention 
      and care
JID - 101134867
SB  - IM
MH  - Benchmarking/statistics & numerical data
MH  - Diagnosis-Related Groups
MH  - Economics, Hospital/*statistics & numerical data
MH  - Efficiency, Organizational/economics/*statistics & numerical data
MH  - Finland
MH  - Humans
MH  - Inpatients/*statistics & numerical data
MH  - Likelihood Functions
MH  - Models, Theoretical
MH  - Outpatients/*statistics & numerical data
MH  - Patient Care/*economics/statistics & numerical data
MH  - Statistics as Topic
MH  - Stochastic Processes
EDAT- 2009/12/29 06:00
MHDA- 2011/01/07 06:00
CRDT- 2009/12/29 06:00
PHST- 2008/09/09 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2009/01/21 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2009/12/29 06:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2009/12/29 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2011/01/07 06:00 [medline]
AID - 10.1007/s10198-009-0211-0 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Eur J Health Econ. 2010 Aug;11(4):395-404. doi: 10.1007/s10198-009-0211-0.