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

    Authors

    K. H. Lee;Y. M. Anderson

    Comments

    Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

    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

    Share

    COinS