Hospital payment source and length-of-stay.

The primary aim of the research reported here is to examine elements of the theory of social organizations as adaptive systems as derived from Roy's model by investigating the ability of hospital payment source to predict length-of-stay. A retrospective review was conducted of 3,297 records of patients discharged under 1 of 10 frequently occurring diagnosis-related-groups. Two groups were formed to isolate the contextual stimuli-patients whose hospital care was paid for under a diagnosis-related-group payment system and patients whose hospital care was paid for under a per diem payment system. The Tilton 0 statistic indicated a high degree of similarity between the two patient groups. Thus, length-of-stay could not be effectively predicted based on the source of payment to the hospital.