title: [Transit of users between hospitals from different states and institutions].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To describe and quantify hospital services given by units of the Ministry of Health (MoH) to patients with social security or living in states different to those where the hospitals are located.
  
  
  METHODS
  With data from the automatized system for hospital discharges patients were classified, according to the place of living, into locals or outsiders; and, according to their insurance status, into social security beneficiaries or not beneficiaries. Frequencies of services for these groups were estimated, and characteristics of patients and services were described.
  
  
  RESULTS
  5.6% of patients of MoH hospitals were outsiders. This percentage reaches 50% in the National Institutes of Health. Only 1.7% of the patients had social security insurance. Sociodemographic and services characteristics are quite different between outsiders or social security patients and those without those attributes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Despite its segmentation, in the National Health System there is a continuous process of exchange of services between different providers.
authors.affiliation: Dirección General de Evaluación del Desempeño, Secretaría de Salud, México, DF, México. dayana.pineda@salud.gob.mx
authors.forename: Dayana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pineda-Pérez
authors.forename: Esteban
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Puentes-Rosas
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Garrido-Latorre
authors.forename: Germán
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Fajardo-Dolci
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006761:Hospitals / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008800:Mexico; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*