Medical necessity for hospitalization has been determined primarily through medical record review using hospitalization appropriateness assessment tools like AEP (appropriateness evaluation protocol). However, these tools have the disadvantage of bein...
Medical necessity for hospitalization has been determined primarily through medical record review using hospitalization appropriateness assessment tools like AEP (appropriateness evaluation protocol). However, these tools have the disadvantage of being time-consuming and cost-consuming, making it difficult to produce regional or national results. On the other hand, computerized screening tools that have recently been developed based on administrative database may be less accurate than medical record review, but can process large amounts of data in a short period of time at low cost. By using Korea's health insurance claims data, which includes information on nationwide medical use, not only can the scale of potential inappropriate hospitalizations be calculated at the national or regional level, but it will also be possible to evaluate the effectiveness of various policies to reduce inappropriate hospitalizations. Accordingly, this study developed a screening tool for appropriateness of hospitalization in a form that can be computerized and proved that estimates of inappropriate hospitalization called PIA (potentially inappropriate admission), can be calculated, and the results were analyzed by patient, medical institution, and medical utilization characteristics.
While it is difficult to accurately determine the patient's helath status in Korea's health insurance claims data, the medical services actually provided to the patient can be identified in detail. Accordingly, we developed a screening tool for the appropriateness of adult hospitalization by converting the appropriateness standards for adult hospitalization from the Korean version AEP, which relatively clearly presents the standards for medical services provided to patients, into a form that can be computerized and calculated. This tool has four definitive criteria (whether medical service code meaning general anesthesia, admission to the intensive care unit, hospice ward admission, or labor-related services included) and five presumptive criteria (whether medical service code meaning continuous vital sign monitoring, arterial blood gas analysis, mechanical ventilator usage, intravenous injection included, or whether intramuscular injection occurs more than once per day on average). If one or more of the nine criteria for each hospitalization episode is met, it is 'appropriate hospitalization'; if no criteria are satisfied, it was classified as PIA.
As a result of the study, the overall PIA rate in Korea was about 13%, and it was increasing every year. By patient characteristics, the PIA rate was high in young age, women, and health insurance subscribers, and by hospital characteristics, the PIA rate was high in clinic-level or medical institutions with 50 or fewer beds. The length of hospital stay of PIA was longer than that of appropriate hospitalization, but the total medical costs were lower. In 2020, during the COVID-19 epidemic, the PIA rate increased compared to the previous year, and COVID-19 infection was a factor which was the most closely related to PIA.
The adult hospitalization appropriateness screening tool developed in this study estimated the patient's condition based on the medical services actually provided to the patient and evaluated the need for medical hospitalization, thereby overcoming the shortcomings of Korea's claims data, which lack information on the patient's illness and severity. However, if this tool is used for evaluation and compensation by institution, there are concerns about side effects such as changes in provider behavior and threats to patient safety Therefore it is desirable to use this screening tool to establishing a foundation for a policy to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and to use it to evaluate policy effectiveness.