Nueva propuesta de indicadores de gestión de los servicios médico-quirúrgicos mediante técnicas estadísticas multivariantes

Objective: To obtain indicators useful for hospital management based on descriptive multivariate techniques. Material and method: Data on hospital admissions in 2003 were analyzed in April 2006 in the Hospital Clínico de la Universidad de Chile. The variables monitored by the Operations Management Department in the university hospital were studied: number of discharges, mortality rate, re-admissions rate, number of outpatient consultations, number of hospital stays, length of stay in the intensive care unit, patient age, and surgical complexity index. The variables were considered for a total of 24,345 discharges. The principal components analysis (PCA) technique was applied and the R correlation matrix was used. Results: The first two principal components were selected, accounting accumulatively for 71.3% of the variability: the first component for 49.4% and the second component for 21.9%. Conclusions: The first component may be related to a new index representing the complexity of the patients attended, which we have termed Case Complexity. The second principal component would explain the number of persons attended, which we have termed Case Load. These two indices allow us to classify hospital services.