Health Policy Manag.  2024 Mar;34(1):26-37. 10.4332/KJHPA.2024.34.1.26.

Comparative Analysis of Medical Use of Spine Specialty Hospitals and Nonspecialty Hospitals

• Lee YN
• Jeong YJ
• Lee KS

• KMID: 2562560
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4332/KJHPA.2024.34.1.26

Abstract

Background
The purpose of this study was to compare and analyze the differences in charges and length of stay per case between spine specialty hospitals and non-specialty hospitals, and to identify the factors that influenced them.
Methods
This study used claims data from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, including inpatient visits from January 2021 to December 2022. The healthcare facility status data was used to identify the characteristics of study hospitals. Multilevel analysis was conducted to identify factors associated with the charges and Poisson regression analysis was conducted to analyze the length of stay between spine specialty hospitals and non-specialty hospitals. There were 32,015 cases of spine specialty hospitals and 17,555 cases of non-specialty hospitals.
Results
For four of five common spinal surgeries, specialty hospitals shaped longer length of stay than those of non-specialty hospitals. Multilevel and Poisson regression analysis revealed that regardless of the type of surgery, higher age and higher Charlson comorbidity index scores were significantly associated with an increase in both the charges per case and length of stay (p<0.05). However, when hospitals were located in metropolitan areas, there was a significant decrease (p<0.05).
Conclusion
This study found that specialty hospital had higher inpatient charges and loner length of stay contrary to the previous study results. Further studies will be needed to find which contribute to the differences.

Keyword

Spinal surgery; Spine specialty hospitals; Non-specialty hospitals; Length of stay; Charges per case