Analysis of Resource Intensive Activity Volumes in us Hospitals

Resource intensive healthcare activities in hospitals can be measured and quantified on a standardized scale using the Hospital Unit of Care (HUC). A HUC is defined as the equivalent resources required to provide one general medical/surgical inpatient day. The HUC models hospitals as a series of patient-centric activities designed to provide the needed quality of care. Five HUC components are quantified to derive the overall HUC level of a hospital: (i) case-mix adjusted inpatient days, (ii) intensive care, (iii) nursery, (iv) outpatient care, and (v) ancillary services. The HUC is compatible with the Medicare MEDPAR database. Here, the HUC activity results are used characterize hospitals based on their operational profiles, primarily due to the difficulty in accessing operations data in a standardized format. For our data set of 1000+ hospitals, we show that resource use profiles vary significantly between states and within states. The profiles are then used to define HUC resource use peer groups or λ-Type s. Each group includes hospitals with a similar positive bias in a specific HUC component. Group distribution by state is shown to vary significantly, and specific differences are discussed. Clearly, operational initiatives and productivity benchmarks cannot be generalized for all hospitals, but should be focused on their specific resource use profiles.