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Article History

Received: 18 June 2025

Revised: 11 April 2026

Accepted: 26 April 2026

First Online: 22 May 2026

Change Date: 3 July 2026

Change Type: Update

Change Details: The formatting of equations in the Methods section under the sentence “The resulting DRG-based regression was defined” and "From which DRG-based predicted payment variances were" appeared incorrectly in the springer link has been corrected.

Declarations

:

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: Western IRB Copernicus Group (WCG) served as the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for this research. The WCG IRB waived informed consent for participation and determined that our investigation was exempt under 45 CFR § 46.104(d)(4) of the US Code of Federal Regulations because the identity of the human subjects could not be ascertained or re-identified.

: NA due to exempt status.