[What is the difference between patients with and without complex postoperative acute pain therapy?: An analysis of...

Appropriate postoperative pain therapy is essential for an accelerated recovery. However, coding complex acute pain therapy (OPS 8-919) does not have any impact on hospital revenues. As medical and economic primary data related to this therapy are scarce, hospital data were analysed to identify differences between patients with and without acute pain therapy.

Two patient groups were generated out of an anonymized data set from 372 acute care hospitals in 2005: The case group (G1) included 4,197 patients (OPS 8-919 coded). The control group (G2) contained 61,181 patients (neither OPS 8-919 nor 8-910 nor 8-911 coded).

The analysis revealed that patients in G1 had a prolonged mean length of hospital stay (2.5 days). The mean number of diagnoses per case was similar in both groups (G1:6.9, G2:6.6), whereas the mean number of procedures was higher in G1 (G1:8.2, G2:6.2). The difference in mean diagnosis-related group (DRG) revenue per case was about EUR 200 (G1:EUR 9,233, G2:EUR 9,030).

To validate the results found in this analysis, further evaluations of these patient groups are essential. High-quality documentation and coding in hospitals are required for future studies.