Most hospital admissions are emergencies

Almost 70% of all in-patient admissions to hospital are admitted as emergencies, a report on discharges from Irish acute public hospitals has found.

The report, which was released by the Economic Social Research Institute (ESRI) and presents information on hospitals participating in the Hospital In-Patient Enquiry scheme in 2007, shows that close to 1.32 million discharges were reported by the participating hospitals in 2007, compared to 1.24 million discharges in 2006.

Public discharges accounted for 74.4% of in-patient discharges and the remainder were private. The total in-patient average length of stay was slightly longer for public discharges (6.4 days) compared to private discharges (5.7 days). Some 82.4% of day patient discharges were public discharges. Public discharges increased by 7.7% while private decreased by 0.4% between 2006 and 2007.

More than half of total discharges were day patients, and the remainder were in-patients. Between 2006 and 2007, day patient discharges increased by 8.6% and in-patient discharges increased by 2.7%.

Some 4.45 million bed days were used in 2007, an increase of 2.3% on the 2006 figure. Acute in-patients (those who stayed for less than 30 days) accounted for 44.2% of total discharges and 61.4% of total bed days.

Extended stay in-patients (those who stayed for 30 days or more) accounted for 1.3% of total discharges and more than one-fifth of total bed days. Day patients accounted for 16.1% of total bed days.

According to the report, the average length of stay for acute in-patient discharges was 4.7 days, but this varied according to hospital type. Voluntary hospitals recorded an average length of stay of 6.1 days for acute in-patient discharges, compared to 4.7 days reported for regional hospitals and 4.3 days reported for county hospitals.

HSE South had the lowest number of hospital discharges per head of population, where there were 284.2 total discharges for every 1,000 members of the population. The highest was in the HSE West area, where there were 334.6 deaths per 1,000.

Day patient activity peaked in October. Planned in-patient admissions peaked in July and emergency in-patient admissions peaked in January.

The 75 to 84-year-old age group had the highest discharge rate for in-patients (417.8 discharges per 1,000 members of the population in this age group compared to 137.8 per 1,000 members of the population for total in-patient discharges). More than one-fifth of in-patient (21.2%) bed days were used by discharges in this age group, even though they accounted for only 11.2% of total in-patient discharges.

Medical card holders accounted for less than half (45.5%) of in-patient discharges. In-patient discharges with a medical card stayed an average of 8.2 days in hospital, which was on average 3.7 days longer than in-patient discharges without a medical card.

The full report is available online at www.esri.ie.

[Posted: Tue 15/09/2009]