Implementation of diagnosis related groups methodology in a university hospital

Background: The Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG) constitute a method of classifying hospital discharges. Aim: To report its development and implementation in a Chilean University Hospital and global results of 10 years Material and Methods: We included 231,600 discharges from 2007 to 2016. In the development we considered the physical plant, clinical record flow, progressively incorporated human resources and computer equipment for coding and analysis to obtain results. The parameters used were: average stay, average DRG weight, mean of diagnosis and codified procedures, behavior of upper outliers, hospital mortality, distribution by severity and its relationship with other variables. Results: The global complexity index was 0.9929. The average of diagnoses coded was 4.35 and of procedures was 7.21. The average stay was 4.56 days, with a downward trend. The top outliers corresponded to 2.25%, with stable hospital days and average DRG weight. The median of hospital mortality was 1.65% with a tendency to decrease and stable DRG mean weight. Seventy two percent had a grade 1 severity, with low median hospital stay. They occupied 40% of bed days. Nine percent had a grade 3 severity with high median hospital stay and accounting for 31.5% of bed days. Conclusions: DRG methodology is a valuable information tool for decision making and result assessment in hospital management.