Cost analysis and a model of pediatric inpatients with diabetes in quality perspective of healtcare services: A Duzce University Research and Practice Hospital study

Purpose of this study is to evaluate the costs of diabetes mellitus which became an economic and healthcare problem worldwide and in Turkey and to identify the demographic and healthcare service related causes of these costs in terms of hospital admission. This study includes 320 pediatric diabetes patients and their 438 inpatient hospital admissions who were treated at Child Health and Diseases Clinic in the Duzce University Research and Practice Hospital. After the literature scanning, study proved to be the first research to evaluate the costs of diabetes patients in term of inpatient hospital admission therefore it is exploratory. After a pediatric endocrinology expert revised the raw data received from the hospital database and demographics-metabolics of the patients taken from the files, data were analyzed with statistical techniques to create a model. We found that younger patients' costs are higher, patients with single parent and patients with low family income admitted to the hospital more frequently, increase in hospital admission decreases the total days stayed in the hospital and patients who admitted to the hospital more frequently cause lower costs per admittance than patients admitted less. In conclusion our study serves as an important dataset for health policies in the area of cost of diabetes. Other parameters influencing inpatient diabetes management costs as well as cost of diabetes for outpatients, for adults and for complications remain as research topics in the future.