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At the end of 2003 there were 272 hospitals with a total of 67,700 hospitals beds in Austria. 139 of these hospitals are financed by public funds (the so-called “fund-hospitals”). These so-called fund hospitals contain about 73 percent of the total hospital beds in Austria. For the most part, they provide care in the Austrian acute inpatient sector. Cost data are available for these hospitals.
The Austrian DRG System
Since 1978, hospital financing has been regulated with the framework of time-limited contracts based on the Constitution between the Federation and all the provinces. With the Agreement in Accordance with the Art.15a of the Federal Constitution Act on the Organisation and Financing Health Care, which has been in effect since 2005, the Federal Health Agency was established, which is also charged with performing the duties defined in the above agreement. These duties include the further development of the hospital financing system for publicly financed hospitals.
Since January 1st 1997, inpatient stays in the public and non-profit general hospitals and public specialised hospitals have been billed on the basis of the “Leistungsorientierte Krankenanstaltenfinanzierung (LKF)”, the Austrian DRG (Diagnoses Related Groups) System.
The coming years will see further development of the Austrian DRG System, with updated of the DRG weights and the introduction of diagnosis and procedure documentation - as well as the development of a DRG - based reimbursement system - for the area of outpatient care.
Documentation in Hospitals
The hospital documentation activities necessary for the steering, planning and financing of the hospital sector and the health care system as a whole are regulated on the federal level and lie within the competence of the Federal Ministry of Health, Family and Youth. The further development of public health care documentation is based on a good foundation, since extensive data has been collected in hospitals since 1978. Over the past view years, the system of documentation has been streamlined and updated and the various individual areas have been fine-tuned relative to one another. Beginning with the reporting year of 2004, hospitals data have been collected with new tools including extensive plausibility checking routines, which additionally assures this data’s quality.
The introduction of outpatient diagnosis and procedures documentation planned for the next few years (for hospital outpatient clinics, private practices and independent outpatient clinics) will constitute a further milestone on the way to creating a store of data and information with which the various sectors of the health care system will become easier to compare. This will provide a still better basis for the steering, planning and financing of the health care system.
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