If the hospital has less than 10 cases that match the model for a cell, no information is shown, but this data is included in higher levels of aggregation. Due to their limited exposure in the Medicare data, maternity and newborn admissions are not included in the model. Inappropriate admissions have been included in only the Medicare analysis at this time. These Indices are based upon a complete evaluation of admissions for a DRG by severity combination to develop statistical models of expected LOS with variables for diagnoses, procedures, admission sources and discharge dispositions identified as statistically significant. Since the hospitals have varying LOS even after adjusting for these variables, the estimates of their true means are subject to statistical variation.
Psychiatric hospitals tend to have wider confidence limits.
This range is wide due to a smaller number of admissions in psychiatric vs. acute care hospitals and substantial fluctuations in treatment patterns for psychiatric admissions. The MDC can also serve as a proxy for a specialty. This information can be used to target programs to improve efficiency where they can have maximum impact. Identifying the number and types of infections which occur after admission, in order to improve infection control. Using preadmission education, training and home evaluation to shorten the length of stay of partial and total hip replacement surgery.