[Day clinic: a model for reducing the length of stay in hospitals]

ABSTRACT

Hospitals are the most essential and costly health care providers, allocating the highest percentage of expenses to inpatient wards. To cut down these costs, unnecessary length of stay should be shortened. The aim was to study the length of stay in day clinics, general, and private hospitals in Tabriz. The population in this descriptive-analytic study included all inpatients in day clinics, general, and private hospitals of Tabriz, offering adenotonsillectomy and cataract services. Samples [N=885] were randomly selected from six hospitals using a checklist the content validity of which was verified by the experts. Data analysis was carried out using frequency, frequency percent, mean, standard deviation, and Pearson correlation coefficient, Kruskal-Wallis test, Man Whitney U Test using SPSS software. For normal distribution, Kolomograve- Smirnove test was applied. The average length of stay for adenotonsillectomy and cataract in general, private hospitals, and day clinics were 1.60+/-0.929,1.88+/-0.375 and 1.00 +/-0.00 and 1.70+/-0, respectively .The results of dual comparison test indicated that the duration for adenotonsillectomy and cataract services were very different. This period was significantly less in private hospitals and day clinics [plength of stay did not show a significant difference for this service in day clinics and private hospitals [pprivate hospitals and day clinics [p>0.005] concerning the length of stay for cataract services. The model of day clinics can be used to reduce expenses and improve the services provided by general and private hospitals