Since 1997 there is a new case based hospital financing system for inpatients in Austria. Before these hospital have been paid for the length of stay independent of the diagnoses and procedures. The fees for the length of stay have not been sufficient and therefore the deficit. was paid by the owners of the hospitals. The new system is called “Leistungsorientierte Krankenanstaltenfinanzierung (LKF)”, which means that diagnoses as well as procedures are used for the classification of a patient. The system is similar to the DRG-system in its basic concept. A learning set of approximately 500.000 data set was used for the identification of cost-homogenous groups of patients. The system is very flexible and it was possible in the last years to improve, modify and adapt it continuously.

This system has shown different effects on the behaviour of hospitals, like reduction of the length of stay, an improvement in data quality or higher awareness of costs. Furthermore the data can be used for an improved controlling and further development of the hospital system.

This presentation will describe the new Austrian hospital financing system, the systematic revision of the model, the evidence of some changes based on empirical data as well as the discussion of some necessary extensions of the model for special departments and outpatient care.