Question

What is the national average CMI for hospitals ?

Answer 1

Case mix index (CMI) is a relative value assigned to a Diagnosis Related Group(DRG) of patients in a medical care environment. It is used in determining the allocation of resources to care for and /or treat the patients in a group.

The CMI of a hospital reflects the diversity, clinical complexity and the needs for resources in the population of all the patients in the hospital.

The Case Mix Index (CMI) is the average relative DRG weight of a hospitalâs inpatient discharges, calculated by summing the Medicare Severity-Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG) weight for each discharge and dividing the total by the number of discharges. The CMI reflects the diversity, clinical complexity, and resource needs of all the patients in the hospital. A higher CMI indicates a more complex and resource-intensive case load. Although the MS-DRG weights, provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), were designed for the Medicare population, they are applied here to all discharges regardless of payer

The financial department monitors case-mix index (CMI), and in an ideal world, the hospital’s CMI would be as high as possible. A high CMI means the hospital performs big-ticket services and therefore receives more money per patient. Although a hospital can calculate its CMI based on all inpatients, that usually is not published.

For context, The cleveland clinic has a medicare CMI approaching 2.5. A general hospital in a midsize town typically ranges between 1.2 to 1.4.