Assignment task:
You are a hospital administrator and your hospital is in financial difficulty. You are about to address the medical staff, imploring them to help the hospital financially. In the old days, all you had to say was, in effect: "Admit as many patients as possible and keep them in the hospital as long as you can," but times have changed. For some methods of payment, you want physicians to admit more patients; for others, you don't. For some methods, you want patients to stay long, for others, you don't. What do you tell the medical staff regarding the following: Want Online Help?
- Medicare (DRG) patients;
- Medicaid (per diem) patients;
- HMO (per diem) patients; and
- HMO (capitated) patients.
For each of these categories of patients, does it help or hurt the hospital for physicians to
- admit more patients;
- keep them in the hospital more days; and
- order more diagnostic studies?