The observation versus inpatient distinction is rightly getting more media and public attention with each passing month. In a nutshell, for anyone reading who is not familiar with what this is all about, it’s essentially a way of categorizing people when they get admitted to hospital.
You are either deemed an inpatient (basically a more complex case) or an observation (a less serious case). The individual reasons and checkboxes that have to be fulfilled in order to be an inpatient are beyond the scope of this article, but the distinction initially came from Medicare (at the federal government level) and has now been adopted by insurance companies too.
Why does this matter? Because patients who are classed as observation are responsible for more out-of-pocket costs than those who are inpatients. There’s little doubt that the intended consequence of this is to reduce central health care costs and shift more burden onto patients for the less acute cases. Even more worrying is that year by year, the criteria for being classified as an inpatient appear to be getting stricter.
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