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CMW Sneak Peek: Determine an appropriate LOS for your facility

Case Management Weekly, July 29, 2009

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Executives frequently use LOS as a measure to determine how well your case management staff members perform. Although LOS is often an accurate performance measure, the case management director needs to carefully analyze this measure with additional outcomes and processes to determine the case management opportunities for LOS improvement.

When determining whether your hospital’s LOS is on target, you must first determine the severity of your patient population. One would expect a patient with comorbidities to have a longer LOS. Determine the severity-adjusted LOS by dividing your LOS by your case-mix index. This allows for a quick comparison between the geometric LOS.

Next, closely examine your hospital’s case-mix index. In a severity-adjusted LOS, a conservative case-mix index can falsely elevate your LOS by misrepresenting the severity of illness in your patients. Since the case-mix index is driven mostly by physician documentation and medical coding, review your current practices to properly capture and represent an accurate case mix.

Check out the July 2009 issue of Case Management Monthly to read the full article, and discover the benefits of becoming a Case Management Monthly subscriber.

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