Assessing the severity of patients’ illnesses to better manage health care resources

The computerized severity index (CSI) system, an intelligent decision support system (DSS), is now used as a management tool at a growing number of hospitals in the U.S. and Canada. The CSI expertly determines the severity level of a patient’s illness and enables hospital management to more effiectively evaluate the utilization of health care resources and the outcome of treatments. The authors developed CSI methodology as s complement to the diagnosis related groups (DRG) system that is mandated by federal law. While DRGs enable reimbursement agencies to classify patients into groups by type of illness and define hospitals’ products, health care managers need a more refined classification system to compare the quality and economic efficiency of different treatment protocols, different physicians, and different hospitals.