Benchmarking hospital length of stay in the real world

What is it about?

Both the long-term trends in length of stay (LOS) and the variation associated with LOS are subject to poorly understood environmental interactions and on the limitations imposed by sampling error, i.e. the variation in average LOS expands exponentially as the number of admissions declines. Indeed some diagnoses have far higher intrinsic volatility than other due to the external environment.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Current attempts to benchmark between hospitals are crude and sometimes misleading because they ignore the role of the external environment in the natural volatility in average LOS. Indeed the vast majority of diagnoses/HRGs/DRGs occur at such low local frequency that sampling error becomes a major issue.

Perspectives