A Controlled Intervention in Reduction of Redundant Hospital Days

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Abstract
BackgroundInappropriate use of hospital services, in the form of unjustified hospital stay days (HSD), constitutes a major burden on a health budget. Reduction of unjustified HSD was achieved in a medical ward in a previous intervention study.MethodsA controlled intervention aimed at reducing unjustified hospital stay was performed on 155 paediatric inpatients and 248 controls, by applying pre-set criteria for hospitallzation and comparing to results in previous studies.ResultsUnjustified stay was decreased from 32.6% to 14.8% on the study ward, and from 25.7% to 19.3% on the control ward. The children on both wards did not differ significantly in rates of subsequent out of hospital mortality, re-admission, and the subjective evaluation of health by their parents one month following discharge.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that despite the fact that the per cent of unjustified HSD on a paediatric ward is much lower than on medicine or surgery, a significant reduction in unjustified stay can be achieved by intervention programme.

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