Hospital Resources Used To Treat the Injured Elderly at North Carolina Trauma Centers

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Objective: The purpose of this paper is to compare the hospital resources used by elderly, adult, and pediatric patients treated in hospitals reporting to the North Carolina Trauma Registry (NCTR).Design: We analyzed data on all patients entered into the NCTR from 1 January 1988 to 31 December 1990.Setting: The NCTR is a statewide registry of all trauma patients admitted for at least 24 hours or dead on arrival at the eight Level I and II trauma center hospitals in North Carolina.Patients: The total number of patients included in the study was 21,214; elderly adults included those age 65 and older (n = 2808), adults included those 15 to 64 years old (n = 15,776), and pediatric patients included those 0 to 14 years old (n = 2630).Main Outcome Measures: We examined hospital resources using three measures: overall length of hospital stay in days, intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay in days for those admitted to the ICU, and total hospital charges billed during the hospitalization.Results: Controlling for injury severity, we found that elderly adults had longer mean hospital and ICU lengths of stay and higher mean hospital charges than adults or children. Whereas only 22% of injuries to elderly adults were transportation‐related, transportation injuries generated 38% of their hospital charges. Sixty‐eight percent of their injuries were caused by falls, generating total hospital charges of $17.6 million, an average of 15 days in hospital stay and 9 days in ICU stay.Conclusion: A 10% reduction in both transportation injuries and falls among the elderly could save $3.5 million in this population over 3 years.

This publication has 22 references indexed in Scilit: