DRG coding practice: a nationwide hospital survey in Thailand

Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) payment is preferred by healthcare reform in various countries but its implementation in resource-limited countries has not been fully explored.

This study was aimed (1) to compare the characteristics of hospitals in Thailand that were audited with those that were not and (2) to develop a simplified scale to measure hospital coding practice.

A questionnaire survey was conducted of 920 hospitals in the Summary and Coding Audit Database (SCAD hospitals, all of which were audited in 2008 because of suspicious reports of possible DRG miscoding); the questionnaire also included 390 non-SCAD hospitals. The questionnaire asked about general demographics of the hospitals, hospital coding structure and process, and also included a set of 63 opinion-oriented items on the current hospital coding practice. Descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were used for data analysis.

SCAD and Non-SCAD hospitals were different in many aspects, especially the number of medical statisticians, experience of medical statisticians and physicians, as well as number of certified coders. Factor analysis revealed a simplified 3-factor, 20-item model to assess hospital coding practice and classify hospital intention.

Hospital providers should not be assumed capable of producing high quality DRG codes, especially in resource-limited settings.