A study on health care services cost to prevent adverse events in acute hospitals.

本研究的目的是调查医疗服务成本或资源消耗随不良事件的变化，并估计预防不良事件所需的成本。可以知道住院时间延长和/或额外的程序，但急性医院护理的人力资源危机太严重，无法进行有效的调查，研究仅限于模型分析。在详细案例分析的基础上，发现包括机会成本在内的人员成本对预防不良事件的资源消耗具有较好的参考价值。然后，对1514家医院进行了调查，了解医院工作人员如何分配他/她的安全服务时间。843家医院的调查结果显示，平均每家医院的安全管理费用为7400万日元，即每张病床每天734日元，而且越小的医院每张病床的费用越高。

The objective of this study is to survey the changes of health care services cost or resource consumption accompanied with adverse events, and to estimate required cost to prevent adverse events. Prolonged length of hospital stay and/or additional procedures could be known, but the human resource crisis in the acute hospital care is too serious to carry out effective survey, the study was restricted within the model analyses. On the basis of detailed case analyses, it was found personnel cost including opportunity cost could indicate better reference on resource consumption to prevent adverse events. Then, 1514 hospitals were surveyed on how hospital staff allocates his/her time to safety services. Responses of 843 hospital had induced the result that the average cost for safety management could be estimated amounted to 74 million yen per hospital, i.e. 734 yen per bed per day, and the tendency was found that the smaller hospital, the more expensive per bed.