A controlled intervention in reduction of redundant hospital days.
BACKGROUND
Inappropriate 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.


METHODS
A controlled intervention aimed at reducing unjustified hospital stay was performed on 155 paediatric inpatients and 248 controls, by applying pre-set criteria for hospitalization and comparing to results in previous studies.


RESULTS
Unjustified 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.


CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrates that despite the fact that the per cent of unjustified HSD on a paediatric wars is much lower than on medicine or surgery, a significant reduction in unjustified stay can be achieved by intervention programme.
Vardi
A
A
Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv University Medical School, Tel Hahomer, Israel.
Modan
B
B
Blumstein
Z
Z
Lusky
A
A
Schiff
E
E
Barzilay
Z
Z
D002648:Child; D006300:Health Services Misuse; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006776:Hospitals, Pediatric; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D007902:Length of Stay; D011446:Prospective Studies