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Disease severity is a term used to characterize the impact that a disease process has on the utilization of resources, comorbidities, and mortality. It is often used by funding agencies to determine what is an appropriate payment for hospitalization or nursing home payments based on Diagnosis-Related Groups or RUGS (Resource Utilization Groups). There are several “severity indexes” that may be used to quantify the severity of illness such as the Glascow Coma Scale for assessing the severity of cognitive dysfunction or the Mini-Mental Examination that quantifies the degree of dementia.
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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media, New York
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Gambert, S. (2013). Disease Severity. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_1385
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_1385
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1004-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1005-9
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