Data compression for medical report archiving.

In a hospital environment, where large numbers of reports are compiled, data compression offers a method for substantially reducing the required disk space whilst protecting the confidentiality of patient data. An analysis is given of the most important parameters that influence compression of free-text data, to realize an efficient implementation of an archiving system for medical reports. An overall reduction of the required disk space by more than 50% can be attained, as well as supplementary level of protection. A slight increase in access time is thereby inevitable, but almost insignificant. Such an archiving system constitutes a necessary component for an intelligent information retrieval system. The access to information contained in medical documents (by means of natural language processing and artificial intelligence techniques) is considered to be one of the key issues in the field of medical informatics for the coming decades.

Use of diagnosis related groups for hospital management.

This paper gives an overview on the use of Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) for internal hospital management. Some figures derived from a comparative study between 3 university hospitals in Belgium are used to illustrate specific points. Attention is given to cost accounting and cost control on the one hand, and utilization review and quality assurance testing on the other. Costs have been approximated by billed charges. It is concluded that DRGs can effectively be used for hospital management, in addition to hospital financing for which some pressure also exists in Europe.