In: Operations Management
have DRGs actually reduced health care costs?
answer...
Yes, DRGs have actually reduced health care costs. Diagnosis
Related Group payment codes (DRGs) promote transparency of cost and
make it easier to establish which patients would use more and which
patients less of healthcare resources.
Moreover, most of the hospitals have global budgets that cover the
cost of patient care. For instance, in Germany, if a hospital
exceeds its first year budget, then the payments based on DRGs are
reduced in the next year.
The Health Affairs article shows that many DRG systems also take
into account the physician’s fees. Hospitals that follow best
practices of caring for stroke related or other critically ill
patients may receive higher payments for maintaining consistently
better quality.
In recent times, though there has been a trend of cost-shift to
patients, such as user fee, but such increases are linked to the
inflation rate. So the real impact on patients is
minimal.