Evaluation of Inpatient Healthcare Efficiency Across Healthcare Rights Groups By Quick Method Costing with Adjusted Related Weights

Abstract

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of inpatient healthcare across different healthcare rights groups by comparing shortcut costs with adjusted related weights (RW). The objectives are (1) to study the structure of adjusted related weights with hospital stay days compared to Quick method Cotting across various healthcare rights groups, and (2) to evaluate inpatient treatment effectiveness by comparing adjusted related weights with hospital stay days against shortcut costs across these groups. The data used in this study are from inpatient records at Samutsakhon Hospital for the fiscal year 2023, along with accounting expenditure data for the same period. The study categorizes patients into six healthcare rights groups: (1) Universal Health Coverage, (2) Social Security, (3) Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme, (4) Direct Payment, (5) Migrant Health Cards, and (6) Other Rights Groups. The study compares resource usage by calculating the cost per adjusted related weight across these groups, split into non-surgical and surgical treatments. The distribution of cost per adjusted RW was found to be non-normally distributed, so the median was used as the central value for comparison using non-parametric statistics. The results show that for non-surgical treatment, the median cost was 13,039.35 THB, with the Universal Health Coverage group having the lowest median of 12,456.31 THB, significantly lower than the other groups. This indicates better resource efficiency in the Universal Health Coverage group. On the other hand, Other Rights Groups had a median cost of approximately 16,508.00 THB, higher than all other groups, indicating lower efficiency. For surgical treatment, the median cost was 12,470.45 THB, with the Universal Health Coverage having the lowest median at 12,456.31 THB, which was not significantly different from the Migrant Health Cards group, suggesting better resource efficiency for both groups. Other Rights Groups had a median cost of 15,087.27 THB, which was not significantly different from the Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme had a median cost of 14,120.75 THB but significantly higher than the remaining groups, indicating less efficient resource utilization. The findings of this study can be used to evaluate the appropriateness of resource utilization in each category of healthcare costs. The comparison of resource efficiency across rights groups is a quantitative analysis based on the same output. However, the study does not consider qualitative aspects of healthcare outcomes, such as patient satisfaction, recovery, or mortality rates, which involve many factors and should be explored in future research.