The performance of Australian DRGs

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an evaluation study of the Australian National Diagnosis RelatedGroups (AN-DRGs). The evaluation was based on statistical rather than clinical criteria with theprincipal goal being to provide information for the future development of the classification system. Aswell as comparing versions 1.0 to 3.0 of AN-DRGs, the project included a comparison of these systemswith the most recent versions of the DRG systems from the United States. Taking all the evaluationcriteria together, Version 3.0 of AN-DRGs performed best of all the systems except for the All PatientRefined (APR)-DRGs with its much larger number of groups. However, the differences between all theclassifications were slight. Data of higher quality are needed if further refinements of the AN-DRGsare to produce substantial improvements in performance.