Advance Data 278. An
estimated 30.8 million inpatients, excluding newborn infants were discharged from
short-stay non-Federal hospitals in the United States in 1994. The discharge rate was 119
discharges per 1,000 civilian population and the average length of stay was 5.7 days. The
statistics presented in this report are based on data collected through the National
Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), a continuous survey that has been conducted by the
National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) since 1965.
Data Highlights:
One or more surgical or
nonsurgical procedures was performed for an estimated 20.0 million of the 30.8 million
inpatients discharged from short-stay hospitals during 1994.
Five diagnostic categories accounted
for more than one million discharges. These were heart disease (4.1 million), delivery
(3.9 million), malignant neoplasms (1.4 million), psychoses (1.2 million), and pneumonia
(1.2 million).
The average length of stay was 6.2
days for males and 5.4 days for females during 1994. The average length of stay for
females who were hospitalized for deliveries (including cesareans) was 2.4 days.
The average length of stay by
geographic regions were 4.8 days in the West, 5.7 days in the South, 5.6 days in the
Midwest, 6.7 days in the Northeast.