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In recent years, intensive care medicine has occupied a significant portion of medical expenditure in Taiwan. Many studies aim at solving this problem propose establishing a casemix payment system to pay intensive care services. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to proposed a casemix reimbursement system to pay ICU. Results of the study can be used for policy discussion and hospital management of ICU. This study uses a total of 18,302 patients for building an ICU casemix. Information of these patients were collected from claim data of ICU patients in hospitals of South Division of the National Health Insurance Bureau (NHIB). This data cover claim data collected for the whole year of 1997. Data were then be analyzed and classified by using a Classification And Regression Trees (CART) program. Results of the CART analysis are 43 classified ICU case-mix, named Intensive Care Groups(ICGs). Among these ICGs, 7 ICGs have accounted for 50% of total patients and the ICGs belong to six major diagnositic categories, including nervous and respiratory systemic diseases. In addition, eight ICGs have accounted for 50% of total medical expenditire and they have longer the average length of stay (ALOS) and average charge per case. ALOS is longer and charges are higher in medical centers and public hospitals. Results of the study also indicate that ALOS of C-class ICU is the longest, and the charge of A-class ICU is the highest.
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