A case-mix method for developing health planning criteria for hospital services

The principal concern of this article is the inadequacy of the planning criteria currently being used by existing federally funded health planning agencies. A case-mix method was created for developing appropriate criteria. Chart-abstract data from New Jersey were used to create a list of those diagnoses eligible for treatment in the cardiac care unit (CCU), select a sample of hospitals for study and analyze the relationship between CCU bed need and CCU clinical practice. It was shown that existing bed-need criteria for CCU planning represent current CCU clinical practice patterns, which are probably not cost effective. The method was also used to develop empirical values of these criteria, which do represent cost-effective practice. It is recommended that the method be used to strengthen and update continuously all hospital-service need criteria used in current planning activities, including Plan Development and Certificate of Need Review.