Turkish Healthcare Providers' Level of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Toward Diagnosis Related Group System - a Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Diagnosis-related group (DRG) system is patient classification system designed to produce limited number of classes which are relatively similar in terms of resource consumption and clinical characteristics. The aim of this study was to assess the level of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of Turkish health care providers toward DRG system implemented in Turkey.A total of 238 healthcare providers were randomly selected from two urbanand one rural hospital in Turkey.A questionnaire was used for data collection; contacting 32 items (10 items about knowledge, 12 items about attitude and 10 items about the practice) and its validity and reliability were confirmed. Data analysis was performed using chi-square and multivariate logistic regression.In this study,only one third of healthcare providers showed good knowledge (35.7%) and good practice (37.4%) about DRG system,compared to 54.2% of them showed good attitude.There was significant difference between age, gender, occupation groups and whether the respondents have attended a workshop for DRG system in terms of KAP (p > 0.05).These results indicated the need for further actions to implement DRG system in terms of creation of suitable environment and increasing awareness among healthcare providers, especially male, medical doctors, nurses, elderly, and those who have never attended a workshop, in addition to regular review to ensure the program would reach its targets.