APR-DRG Service Intensity Weights and Average Length of Stay

The Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) are a patient classification system that provides a means of relating the type of patients a hospital treats (i.e., its casemix) to the costs incurred by the hospital. There are currently three major versions of the DRG in use. The basic DRGs are used by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) for hospital payment for Medicare beneficiaries. The All Patient DRGs (AP-DRGs) are an expansion of the basic DRGs to be more representative of non- Medicare populations such as pediatric patients. The All Patient Refined DRGs (APR-DRG) incorporate severity of illness and risk of mortality subclasses into the DRGs. For discharges beginning on or after January 1, 2017, the SIWs (Service Intensity Weights), cost thresholds and ALOS effective July 1, 2014 will be used for payment purposes with the updated APR-DRG grouper version 33, which is available in this dataset.