[Regional anaesthesia as advantage in competition between hospitals. Strategic market analysis]

The German Social Act V section sign 12 is aimed towards competition, efficiency and quality in healthcare. Because surgical departments are billing standard diagnosis-related group (DRG) case costs to health insurance companies, they claim best value for money for internal services. Thus, anaesthesia concepts are being closely scrutinized. The present analysis was performed to gain economic arguments for the strategic positioning of regional anaesthesia procedures into clinical pathways.

Surgical procedures, which in 2005 had a relevant caseload in Germany, were chosen in which regional anaesthesia procedures (alone or in combination with general anaesthesia) could routinely be used. The structure of costs and earnings for hospital services, split by types and centres of cost, as well as by underlying procedures are contained in the annually updated public accessible dataset (DRG browser) of the German Hospital Reimbursement Institute (InEK). For the year 2005 besides own data, national anaesthesia staffing costs are available from the German Society of Anaesthesiology (DGAI). The curve of earnings per DRG can be calculated from the 2005 InEK browser. This curve intersects by the cost curve at the point of national mean length of stay. The cost curve was calculated by process-oriented distribution of cost centres over the length of stay and allows benchmarking within the national competitive environment. For comparison of process times data from our local database were used. While the InEK browser lacks process times, the cost positions 5.1-5.3 (staffing costs anaesthesia) and the national structure adjusted anaesthesia staffing costs 2005 as published by the DGAI, were used to calculate nationwide mean available anaesthesia times which were compared with own process times.

Within the portfolio diagram of lengths of stay for each DRG and process times most procedures are located in the economic lower left, in particular those with high case mix (length of stay and anaesthesia times below reimbursement relevant national mean). The driver of increased earnings is shortening length of stay. Our use of regional anaesthesia is 5 to 10-fold higher than national benchmarks and may contribute to our advantageous position in national competition. The annual increases in profit per DRG range between EUR 1,706 and EUR 467,359 and compensate by far the investment of regional anaesthesia derived pain management, besides the advantage of increased patient satisfaction and avoidance of complications.

Regional anaesthesia is a considerable value driver in clinical pathways by shortening length of stay. The present analysis further demonstrates that time for regional block performance is covered by anaesthesia reimbursement within the DRG costing schedule.