With cat‐like tread, the DRGs are coming

As an American participant in ‘Management and Financing of Hospital Services’, the DRG Convention held in London on llth‐13th December, 1986, I had looked forward to the presentations with a great deal of happy anticipation. That may seem a strange attitude unless one recognises that the life of a ‘DRG expert’ in the USA today is not necessarily a happy one. Like it or not, we are viewed as policemen. Much of the continuous, carping and often self‐serving criticism levelled against us can be described as woeful pleas from a band of corsairs; not very bloodthirsty ones mind you, but rapacious nonetheless.