A practical index to support hospital sustainability
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21115/JBES.v18.p6-9Keywords:
Item Response Theory (IRT), Critical indicators, Efficiency and Sustainability Index, Hospital performance, Health system sustainability, Diagnosis-Related GroupsAbstract
Objective: The pandemic highlighted the need to ensure the sustainability of the health system,
prompting the Brazilian company 2iM to develop new evaluation models for hospitals, doctors, and
health plan operators, using the Health Value Score. The Item Response Theory (IRT) is now presented as a new fundamental mathematical tool in hospital evaluation, allowing the identification of critical indicators and the promotion of financial and operational sustainability. Methods: The article proposes a hospital performance evaluation method based on IRT, using software that collects data on admissions, applies the APR DRG system to classify information, and generates insights for identifying key indicators such as length of stay, discharge with scheduled time, readmissions, deaths, and costs. Results: Highlighted results include a 76.50% performance in length of stay, 69.31% in discharge with scheduled time, and 75.99% in turnover. The average length of stay was 4.11 days, compared to the ideal of 2.90 days, representing a revenue opportunity of R$ 1.6 billion between 2020 and 2024. Additionally, 30.69% of discharges occurred outside the scheduled time, creating an additional revenue opportunity of R$ 474 million, considering the importance of compliance with hospital logistics. Conclusion: The Hospital Efficiency Index proved to be simple and practical in application and understanding, indicating key points of attention and review in hospital
management.
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