Impact of hospital admissions subsequent to renal transplantation on Italian regional resources: a retrospective study in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna.

Background: Aim of this retrospective study was to investigate costs and resource consuming, expressed by diagnosis related groups (DRG), related only to hospitalizations of renal transplant recipients (RTRs) for all causes in the Region Emilia Romagna (RER) in Italy.
Methods: We included all hospital admissions of RTRs (International Classification of Diseases 9th Revision, Clinical Modification [ICD-9-CM] code V420) between 2001 and 2015. We calculated number of admissions, RTRs and inhabitants of RER for each year, mean age, length of stay (LOS) in the hospital as total number of days, mean and median days, mean value of DRG and costs of admissions during the 15-year period of the study.
Results: RTRs admitted in the 15 years study period were 9,197 and mean age 56.6±1.6 years. Admissions were 14,558, and mean rate of admitted RTRs (*100,000) was 14.21. Total, mean and median LOS were 122,966, 8.7 and 6 days, respectively. Total costs of admissions during the study period were €72,717,232 with mean DRG values of €3,409. Number of admissions and total number of days required for RTRs as well as mean age of admitted patients increased from 2001 to 2015, however mean and median LOS remained stable.
Conclusions: Costs due to admissions of RTRs appeared to gradually increase in the long term probably due to the increasing number of admissions and increasing mean age of admitted RTRs.