This study aims to assess the impact of Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs) payment system on hospitalization expenses and their compositional changes. A retrospective analysis was conducted on 4711 medical records across nine diseases treated in a Class 3A hospital in Guangdong province. A comparison was made between hospitalization expenses, their composition, and length of stay in 2022 and 2023. Additionally, structural change analysis was employed to assess the degree of change in the composition of medical expenses.Following the implementation of DRGs, there was a significant decrease in the mean hospitalization costs and a notable reduction in the mean length of hospital stay, albeit with divergent effects observed between medical and surgical cases. Furthermore, a general decrease was observed in drug expenses, service charges, and other miscellaneous expenses. Conversely, treatment and diagnosis expenses showed an increase, with surgical operation and material expenses experiencing significant rises. The overall structure of total expenses underwent considerable alteration, exhibiting disease-specific variations.In conclusion, the adoption of DRGs effectively curbs excessive treatments, encourages optimization of internal management within medical institutions, and fosters collaborative reform efforts across medical services, pharmaceutical practices, and healthcare financing systems. Notably, post-DRGs implementation, the structural changes in total expenses vary across different diseases, highlighting the need for particular attention towards the increased expenses related to diagnostic procedures, surgical interventions, and material utilization.

Hailan Liu, Zheng Hu, Xusheng Zhang. The Effect on Hospitalization Expenses after Promoting the DRGs—Based on the Analysis of a Hospital’s Data in Guangdong. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2024) Vol. 7, Issue 4: 94-100. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2024.070415.

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