Prevalence of Subacute Patients in Acute Care: Results of a Study of VA Hospitals
Journal of Medical Systems
Factors Affecting Appropriateness of Hospital Utilization in Two Hospitals in Turkey
Journal of Medical Systems
Appropriateness of Admission and Length of Stay in a Turkish Military Hospital
Journal of Medical Systems
Using Recommendation to Support Adaptive Clinical Pathways
Journal of Medical Systems
Length of stay prediction for clinical treatment process using temporal similarity
Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
Reprint of "Length of stay prediction for clinical treatment process using temporal similarity"
Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
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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.