Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Clinical pathway is widely used in U.S. and European hospitals as a successful method to control medical costs.
OBJECTIVE: To analyze the effects of controlling medical costs after implementation of clinical pathway.
METHODS: The corresponding clinical pathway was designed based on the clinical pathway of Ministry of Health and hospital practice, and a comparison study was peformed in the medical costs of the clinical pathway group and the control group in the way of setting up database through the hospital information system and statistically analyzing the related data.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Compared to the control group, the total length of the hospital stay, the length of the hospital stay before and after surgery, the total medical costs, the surgery medical costs and medical care costs before and after surgery in hospital were declined in patients who took clinical pathways (P < 0.05). It means that the clinical pathway practice can decline the length of hospital stay, reduce medical costs, standardize the diagnosis and treatment behavior and conserve the health resources.