Weighting Factor

Hello,

First once sorry for my bad linguistic proficiency.
I have a question to weighting factor in the diagnosis bridge table.
I do not understand the difference between the Impact report and the Correctly weighted report completely. If somebody could show me please quite an easy calculation example.
I would be really very grateful.

Are you asking about an example in a book? If so, perhaps you could provide a title and page number.

Sorry, this is the page 264 in The Data Warehouse toolkit.

Unfortunately I don't have that book, but maybe now someone else can help.

Thank you for the advice.

I read the page... basically, what he is saying is you can use the weighting factors or not depending on what it is you are trying to do.

I don't like the example being used, as it seems to me, the idea of spreading costs across diagnosis codes doesn't make a lot of sense. But, to someone where it does, he shows how to do it.

The 'impact' reports, where you don't use the weighting factors, would be cases where you are looking at specific diagnosis or specific combinations of diagnosis such that each case is counted once.

For example, you may look at costs associated with a heart attack compared to costs of a heart attack of patients who also have a broken arm (ok, not a great example, but I am not a doctor...).

The biggest problem using weighting factors in the case of diagnosis is that not all diagnosis are created equal. If an instance has 3 diagnosis, would each be assigned 1/3 of the cost? Why? If 1/3 isn't good enough, what process would you go through to properly assign the factors? Allowing weighing factors in this case opens up a Pandora's Box of issues that may take years to reach agreement on.

At first many thanks for the quick response.
My problem was that I have not seen the sense of the same weighting with diagnoses, because they are accounted (at least in our country) by DRG's. But as well as you have explained the difference between both reports to me, now I have understood at least the difference between these both ones and how you say, the diagnosis example does not make a lot of sense. Once more many thanks for your trouble and help!

Yes, it is more common to use DRG's for that type of analysis... they are a widely accepted indicator of severity and interactions among combinations of certain diagnoses.