Survival during and after hospitalization: a medical record linkage.

BACKGROUND: In Sweden, hospital stays, deaths, and censuses have long been stored on electronic media. AIMS: To apply post-hospital survival measures to hospitals having different degrees of specialization by linking existing data in census and in-patient registers. METHOD: In-patient records totaling 3.6 million were collected. They were linked to the 1985 and 1990 censuses regarding patients' background data, and the cause of death registers. Observed three-month mortalities in 27 diagnoses were contrasted against the expected. RESULTS: The three-month survival was lower than expected in some large, and, more often, in small hospitals [corrected].