NIH awards $1.2M for study on discharge decisions at hospitals

A Georgia State University professor and an Emory University surgeon have received a $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for a joint research project to study discharge decisions at hospitals.

GSU Economics Professor James C. Cox, director of the Experimental Economics Center in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, and John F. Sweeney of the Emory University School of Medicine received the three year award from NIH's National Institute on Aging.

Their research focuses on hospital length of stay as a central factor in the increasingly important and complex interplay between quality of health care delivery and medical costs. They will experiment with alternative choices and new applications of information technology designed to increase physicians' effectiveness in identifying the optimal time to discharge a patient.

"We are excited about this opportunity to conduct research on ways to increase quality and lower costs of health care delivery," said Cox, who is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. "This research applies proven methods of experimental and behavioral economics to the objective of improving medical decision making."

Other GSU economics faculty involved include co-investigators Kurt Schnier, associate professor and Vjollca Sadiraj, assistant professor.

"Professor Schnier will lead the large scale analysis of medical records data and will develop statistical models that predict optimal hospital length of stay," Cox said. "Professor Sadiraj will guide development of mathematical models of effective decision making that will be incorporated into the decision support computer software the research team will develop to aid the physicians making discharge decisions ."

Source: Georgia State University