Relationship between the cost of weights and the success of hospital performance from 2006 to 2009

The aim of hospitals organised as public institutes, is not to make profit, but to perform the activities for which they were established. By the derivation of this principle, we may assume that hospitals will seek to achieve a minimum surplus of income over expenditure, irrespective of the amount of funds they receive. Acute hospital treatment is paid according to the Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG) system. Under the DRG system, due to the historical flow of events, hospitals receive different levels of resources for the same services performed, which in turn may affect their business performance. The selected sample includes 15 hospitals, which are organised as public health institutions and which perform health care services at the secondary level only. There is a link between the cost of weights an individual provider receives according to the DRG system, and the surplus of revenues over expenses of each provider (Spearman's rho = 0.52, p = 0.000). However, what is interesting is that with uniform cost of weights and statements adjusted accordingly, hospital performance is even more uneven than with different costs of weights, while the standard deviation of the surplus revenue increases by 59%. Given the above, reflection is needed on the final uniformity of cost of weights in Slovenian hospitals.