Comparison of the Performance of Two Comorbidity Measures, With and Without Information From Prior Hospitalizations

Abstract

Better discrimination is achieved with the Elixhauser et al method using only information from the index hospitalization than is achieved with the Deyo et al adaptation using information from all identified hospital admissions. Both comorbidity risk adjustment methods achieve their best performance when information from the index hospitalization and prior admissions is separated into independent indicators of comorbid illness.