New
Report Shows Current Patterns of Hospitalization in the United States
Hospital Stays Much
Shorter Now than 30 Years Ago
For Immediate Release
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
Contact: NCHS Press Office
(301) 458-4800
CDC Office of Media Relations (404) 639-3286
E-mail: paoquery@cdc.gov
2001 National Hospital
Discharge Survey. Advance Data No. 332. 18 pp. (PHS) 2003-1250. View/download PDF 1.2
MB
The
32.7 million patients in the nation’s hospitals in 2001 had a much
shorter stay on average (4.9 days) than patients hospitalized in 1970 (7.8
days). Over the past three decades, the average length of a hospital
stay dropped for all patients, except children, with the most dramatic
decrease experienced by elderly patients whose hospital stay in 2001 (5.8
days) was less than half of what it had been in 1970 (12.6 days).
In
2001, most inpatients stayed in the hospital for 3 days or less, 27
percent stayed for 4 to 7 days, and only 16 percent stayed longer than a
week, according to a new report, “2001 National Hospital Discharge
Survey,” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The
annual hospital survey collects national data on discharges from
non-Federal short-stay hospitals in the United States.
In
2001, as in earlier years, the most frequent reason for hospitalization
was heart disease, accounting for 4.3 million discharges. While the
rate of hospitalization for most conditions has decreased over the past
two decades, one condition—congestive heart failure—increased by 62
percent for those 65 and over from 1980 to 2001. This increase
reflects the success through drugs and surgery in treating more acute
forms of heart disease, such as heart attacks, thus extending the life of
many elderly people and making it more likely they will develop a chronic
heart problem like congestive heart failure.
Elderly
patients made up over 38 percent of the discharges, and used 46 percent of
all inpatient days, even though they comprised only 12 percent of the
population.
Cardiovascular
conditions were associated with a significant portion of the 41 million
procedures performed on hospital inpatients in 2001. For men,
one-fifth of all procedures were cardiovascular; for women, only 10
percent were cardiovascular. Hospitals performed a million
procedures to remove coronary artery obstructions and insert stents, 1.2
million cardiac catheterizations and almost 2 million arteriography and
angiocardiography procedures. Just over 300,000 inpatients had
coronary artery bypass graft procedures.
Other
major reasons for hospitalization were psychoses (1.6 million discharges),
pneumonia (1.3 million), cancer (1.2 million), and fractures (1 million).
Nearly one-fifth of the hospitalizations for women, 3.8 million, were for
childbirth. About a quarter of the 25 million procedures women
experienced were obstetrical.
The
National Hospital Discharge Survey is conducted by CDC’s National Center
for Health Statistics and provides the most up-to-date information on
hospitalization in the US. This report can be found on the CDC/NCHS
web site.
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