1

Select a Hospital.
You may do so by choosing a hospital from the list on the next screen.  Your selection will be placed in the User List Selections.  If you do not know the hospital you want to select, you may choose “-- ALL HOSPITALS--”.

2

Select a Diagnosis Related Group (DRG)
After the hospital screen, a list of DRGs will appear. A DRG is a more specific classification of hospitalization types based on the patient’s medical condition, procedures performed (if any), and, in some cases, the age and/or sex of the patient. Choose the DRG that most closely reflects the specific type of hospitalization you would like to research. Please note that the only DRGs that will display for a specific hospital are those for which the hospital had at least twenty discharges at that severity level.

3

Select a Severity Level
Data are severity adjusted using a standard statistical method to help users of this report to more accurately examine different populations.  The statewide severity adjusted value is based on the coded severity of illness of the hospital’s patients treated and the total number of cases performed. A hospital that treats a more severely ill population in one of the 100 DRGs would be expected to have a longer average length of stay and higher average charges.  In other words, adjusting the data takes into account how ill a hospital’s average patient was when he or she came to the hospital for treatment or care. Some hospitals treat patients who are sicker than other hospitals.

4

Receive the results.
After you select a specific type of hospitalization, the following information will be displayed:

• The number of discharges, median age, the median length of stay, and median charges including the lower and upper ranges for all hospitals you selected for the DRG and severity level you indicated.  You can choose to run different DRG reports from that screen as well as print the report.