Russell L B
Int J Health Serv. 1976;6(4):557-80. doi: 10.2190/X99R-9HKN-T4H1-KRG2.
Increases in the real resources used in hospital care have been an important cause behind rising hospital costs in the United States. Many of these resources have taken the form of new hospital technologies, and this paper begins by reviewing the trends in adoption of new hospital technologies over the years 1950-1974. The resource requirements, costs , and to the extent possible the patient benefits, of two of these technologies are then discussed in more detail: intensive care, a widespread facility with many variations, has been a major contributor to hospital costs; radiotherapy has been characterized by a succession of competing technologies. Regulatory efforts such as certificiate-of-need reviews would be more effective if they viewed hospitals as flexible collections of such technologies-with the costs and patient benefits of each to be weighed separately-rather than primarily in terms of numbers of beds. A national center to collect information on the separate technological functions of hospitals and make it available to interested groups would make a useful contribution to hospital regulation.
医院护理中实际资源的增加一直是美国医院成本上升的一个重要原因。其中许多资源采取了新医院技术的形式，本文首先回顾了1950年至1974年期间新医院技术采用的趋势。然后更详细地讨论了其中两项技术的资源需求、成本以及在可能的范围内患者的受益情况：重症监护是一种广泛应用且有多种变体的设施，一直是医院成本的主要贡献因素；放射治疗的特点是一系列相互竞争的技术。诸如需求证明审查等监管措施如果将医院视为这些技术的灵活集合体——对每项技术的成本和患者受益分别进行权衡——而不是主要根据床位数量来考虑，将会更有效。一个收集医院各项技术功能信息并向相关群体提供这些信息的国家中心将对医院监管做出有益贡献。
