Title

The association between clinical pathways and hospital length of stay: A case study

Authors

Authors

K. H. Lee;Y. M. Anderson

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Med. Syst.

Keywords

inpatient length of stay; clinical pathway; rural hospital; inpatient; hospital use; APPROPRIATENESS; MANAGEMENT; COST; CARE; Health Care Sciences & Services; Medical Informatics

Abstract

Clinical pathways are the treatment protocol in order to reduce or eliminate variation of care by specifying to nursing and medical staff. The effectiveness of the clinical pathways to accomplish this goal, however, is in question. With the implementation of the clinical pathways in 2001, this study evaluates the effectiveness of clinical pathway in reducing the inpatient length of stay in a rural hospital in a Midwestern state. All inpatient cases were used with the primary diagnoses of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes, myocardial infarction, and pneumonia from the years of 1999-2003. By controlling for gender, age, insurance type, and year, this study employs a multiple regression analysis to evaluate the association between clinical pathways and the length of stay. Only one (the clinical pathway for myocardial infarction) out of the five pathways studied showed an association with a statistical significance in decreasing the length of stay. Health care administrators should consider other aspects as well as the hospital length of stays when implementing clinical pathways in their facility.

Journal Title

Journal of Medical Systems

Volume

31

Issue/Number

1

Publication Date

1-1-2007

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

79

Last Page

83

WOS Identifier

WOS:000244576200009

ISSN

0148-5598

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