Author Description

A number of changes have taken place in the management perspective within health care. Managers no longer merely respond to central government or professional pressures. They are now expected to take a leading role in determining the shape of the health service to meet local needs and make efficient use of resources. Simultaneously there has been a technological revolution in information retrieval. This has affected managers' ready access to increasingly sophisticated support systems to aid their decision-making. Within the health care environment, the difficulty in accounting for case mix has long been viewed as an obstacle to efficient and responsive service planning. The development of diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) in the late-1970s has been seen as a watershed in the search for a more effective response to case mix issues. DRGs classify patients into types that are similar both clinically and in resource use. Because of their unique features DRGs have been chosen by many health services as a robust and workable classification of hospital in-patients. This book reviews applications of DRGs and examines their potential use in health service policy at a national level.