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SQLape®	SQLape®*, pronounced « Esculape » as the god of the physicians, is a registered trade-mark for a tool family designed for diverse applications, especially for: - prediction of hospital costs; - identification of hospital stays eligible for one day surgery; - measure and adjustment of potentially avoidable readmissions; - measure and adjustment of potentially avoidable reoperations; - prediction of in-hospital premature death; - prediction of ambulatory costs; - prediction of lengths of stay; - risk adjustment for sickness funds; - prediction of the costs of psychiatric episodes of care. *Striving for Quality Level and Analyzing of Patient Expenditures
Why to choose SQLape® tools ?	SQLape® groupers	DRGs or other groupers
1) simplicity	- 180 affections - 180 operations	- 650 to 1200 groups
2) intelligibility	- inclusion and exclusion criteria - clinical homogeneity - explicit co-morbidities - multiple operations	- complex algorithms - no explicit clinical criteria - no explicit co-morbidities - one operation for most DRGs
3) predictive performances	Hospital costs (SQLape®) R^2 = 55% (Marazzi A et al, 2005) Potentially avoidable readmissions (SQLape®) C-statistic = 72% (Halfon P et al, 2005) Sickness fund risk adjustment (SQLape®) R^2 = 40-42% (different models) (Holly A et al, 2003)	Hospital costs (DRGs) R^2 = 30-44% (different groupers) (Marazzi A et al, 2005) Potentially avoidable readmissions (Charlson) C-statistic = 69% (Halfon P et al, 2005) Sickness fund risk adjustment (AP-DRGs) R^2 = 34-36% (different models) (Holly A et al, 2003)
4) higher reliability to coding practice	No influence of diagnoses ranking and weaker impact of overcoding: 75% of Swiss inpatients have only one category, only 8% have three or more.	High sensitivity to diagnoses ranking : a) the DRG assignment depend on the main diagnosis; b) operations not related to the main diagnosis are not taken in account
5) less perverse financial incentives	The cost weights are reduced if patients are transferred before the expected length of stay, operations performed concurrently or subsequently provide the same financing	Strong incentive to split up stays (investigation and operations, multiple operations, transfers)
6) quality assurance	SQLape® tools have been designed to integrate cost controlling and quality assurance. Hospital financing can be linked to quality assurance (one day surgery, readmissions, etc.).	None, except for mortality (APR-DRGs only).
Scientific references	Marazzi A, Gardiol L, Duong HD. New approaches to reimbursement schemes based on DRGs and their comparison. Submitted for publication (2005). Halfon P, Eggli Y, Prêtre Rohrbach I, Meylan D, Marazzi A, Burnand B. Validation of potentially avoidable hospital readmission rate as a routine indicator of hospital care quality. Submitted for publication (2005). Holly A, Gardiol L, Eggli Y, Yalcin T, Ribeiro T. Compensation des risques fondées sur l’état de santé des assurés en Suisse (étude FNSRS, [http://www.hec.unil.ch/iems/Publications/publications/rapportholly.pdf] Other scientific references in products’ pages.