DRG Creep

"Diagnostic related groups" (DRGs) have become the watchwords of the health-services research, regulatory, and planning agencies. Introduced in 1975 by Thompson et al.,1 they were intended as a means of grouping patients by discharge diagnosis to measure a hospital's output. These measurements are useful in analyzing and monitoring the hospital's resource utilization, performance, and costs. Today, the use of DRGs is virtually synonymous with case-mix measurement, and it has become the standard method to describe hospital outputs for any use.This article is intended to provide a case report of "DRG creep," a new phenomenon that is expected to occur . . .