Attributing inpatient medicare costs to diabetes among the Texas elderly.

Objective: This study compares alternative methods for attributing hospital utilization and costs to diabetes. Findings from five "numerator" methods, found in the literature and based on presence of certain diagnoses or combinations of diagnoses in the billing records, were compared to benchmark findings derived from attributable risk calculations.

Research Design And Methods: Estimates of non-HMO, short-term, nonspecialized hospital stays, hospital days, and costs attributable to diabetes in Texas were derived from the 1995 Medicare inpatient database (MEDPAR) for persons aged at least 65 years at the end of 1994.