Brief Communication Efforts to Improve the Emergency Medical Service Coefficient Score

Building a stable profit structure is essential for hospitals to continuously provide advanced medical care. Using data analysis software for the Diagnosis Procedure Combination/Per-Diem Payment System (DPC), we compared the performance of our hospital with that of other Group II hospitals (currently, Specified Hospitals) and noted that some of the functional assessment coefficient II values were low. One of these coefficients was the emergency medical service coefficient. The coefficient of our hospital in 2016 was lower than the average of Group II hospitals and was the lowest among all JA Aichi Kouseiren-affiliated hospitals. Given this result, we reviewed our process for calculating the additional fee for emergency medical service management in an effort to increase the rate of charging the additional fee. Specifically, we changed the criteria for identifying patients eligible for the additional fee (manual preparation) and the method of calculation (systematization). These efforts resulted in an increased rate of charging an additional emergency medical service management fee without increasing the rate of assessment during insurance examination. This led to an increased emergency medical service coefficient value. These results suggest a close correlation between the rate of charging the additional emergency medical service management fee and the DPC emergency medical service coefficient.