In hospital mortality, Cost and Length of stay
In-hospital mortality was defined as death from any cause during the
same hospital stay. LOS was already provided by the Healthcare Cost and
Utilization Project (HCUP) for each entry. Disposition to another
facility included transfer to skilled nursing facility, intermediate
care facility, and nursing homes. The HCUP NIS contains data on total
charges for each hospital in the databases, which represents the amount
that hospitals billed for services. To calculate estimated cost of
hospitalizations, the NIS data were merged with Cost to Charge Ratios
(CCR) available from HCUP18, 19. Using the merged data
elements from the CCR files and the total charges reported in the NIS
database, we converted the hospital total charge data to cost estimates
by simply multiplying total charges with the appropriate CCR. These
costs are essentially standardized, can be measured across hospitals,
and are used for the remainder of this report. Adjusted annual costs
were calculated in terms of the 2013 cost, after adjusting for inflation
according to the latest consumer price index data released by the US
government on February 15, 201720.