OBJECTIVES: The German DRG (G-DRG) dataset was originally intended to serve for reimbursement as well as for quality assurance. In the last 15 years the data were mostly used for hospital billing. This investigation should research whether the publicly available data allow the determination of total financial hospital efforts for various types of cancer and the cost allocation within the hospital sector.

METHODS: Data from the German DRG Institute (InEK), different report browsers were collected. The report browsers delivered by the German DRG Institute (InEK) were analyzed for cases of different types of cancer for 2010 and 2015. Statistical analysis was performed using Microsoft-Excel and Access version 2013.

RESULTS: The total hospital costs per case, without special Funding (Zusatzentgelt), were in 2015: €3,913 (2010: €3,387) for breast cancer, €3,515 (€3,044) for lung cancer, €5,010 (€4,039) for colon cancer, €3,332 (€3,007) for Non-Hodgkin-Lymphoma (NHL), €5,678 (€4,012) for plasmacytoma and €10,395 (€8,959) for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The personnel effort for physicians per case was €935 (24% of total) for breast, €719 (20%) lung, €1,132 (23%) for colon, €548 (16%) for NHL, €802 (14%) for plasmacytoma and €1,507 (14%) for AML. From 2010 to 2015 the absolute and relative financial efforts for physicians increased, nursing care shrunk.

There were 98,413 cases of breast cancer (-18% to 2010), resulting in total costs of €385m (-6% to 2010) , 121.663 (-8%) cases of lung cancer (€426m; +6%), 117,707 (-2%) cases of colon cancer (€590m; +12%), 41,003 (+15%) cases of NHL (€137m; +28%), 16,100 (-30%) cases of plasmacytoma (€91m; -2%) and 10,616 (-30%) cases of AML (€110m -18%).

CONCLUSIONS: Data from the German DRG-systems allow insights about the different financial efforts over time. It is possible to calculate an estimate for overall hospital costs for each disease entity. The influence of new technologies on effort patterns and costs could be measured