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Survival during and after hospitalization: a medical record linkage
B Svartbo1, L Olov Bygren, T Gunnarsson
1Department of Social Medicine, Umeå University, Sweden.
Abstract
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].