Cost Analysis Of Surgical Varicocele Patients Hospitalized In A Large Scale Comprehensive Hospital

Background: Today, rising health care costs have become a concern of peopleworldwide and causes governments concerned. The rapid growth of medical costs becomesa problem facing countries in the world. Keeping the balance between the reasonablegrowths of health care costs economic development has become the developed anddeveloping countries’ common goals. The main purpose of current health care reformbeing implemented in China is to control excessive medical costs, and to allocate thehealth resources to meet the medical needs of all members of society.Objective: By analyzing the medical costs of the surgical varicocele caseshospitalized in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, a large integratedhospital, to understand the distribution of hospital costs, to explore factors affectinghospital costs, to provide the scientific evidence for formulating the rational clinicalpathways, and searching an effective way to control medical costs reasonable.Methods: We totally collected medical data of226varicocele patients operated in theSecond Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, between January2008and December2011through the hospital computer network center. Based on the first page of medicalrecord, we investigated the demographic characteristics of the patients, the form of fee paid,patient’s information during hospitalization, hospital costs and proportion. All the datawere input into Excel software, and created a database. SAS9.2software was used toperform the descriptive analysis, multivariate regression analysis of affecting the medicalcosts of the surgical varicocele cases hospitalized. Confidence level was designed as0.05with two-sided tests.Results: This study was involved226surgical varicocele cases hospitalized with29.58±6.50(means±SD) years old (maximum:50yrs. minimum:16yrs.). The averagecost of hospitalization was6903.50±2264.02RMB. Univariate analysis was shown thatthe hospitalization costs were significantly associated with payment methods, surgicaltypes, anesthesia ways, and the degree of wound healing, and were not linked with proportion of drugs, age, number the day before surgery, anesthesia ways and dischargeconditions. Surgical types, payment methods, hospitalized stay and hospitalization dayswere ranked the main4factors for the hospitalization costs through the standardized partialregression coefficient after linear multivariate regression analyzing.Conclusion: The cost of the surgical varicocele patients hospitalized was associatedwith the four main factors: payment methods, surgical types, anesthesia ways andhospitalization days. In order to reduce the health care cost of surgical varicocele patientshospitalized, in the future, we should draft rational clinical pathways according to ourstudy results.