A CONTROLLED INTERVENTION IN REDUCTION OF REDUNDANT HOSPITAL DAYS

Background. Inappropriate use of hospital services, in the form of unj ustified hospital stay days (HSD), constitutes a major burden on a hea lth budget. Reduction of unjustified HSD was achieved in a medical war d in a previous intervention study. Methods. A controlled intervention aimed at reducing unjustified hospital stay was performed on 155 paed iatric inpatients and 248 controls, by applying pre-set criteria for h ospitalization and comparing to results in previous studies.Results, U njustified stay was decreased from 32.6% to 14.8% on the study ward, a nd 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 m ortality, re-admission, and the subjective evaluation of health by the ir parents one month following discharge. Conclusions. This study demo nstrates that despite the fact that the per cent of unjustified HSD on a paediatric ward is much lower than on medicine or surgery, a signif icant reduction in unjustified stay can be achieved by intervention pr ogramme.