Inappropriate Use of Hospital Beds in a Tertiary Care Service Hospital

The cost of medical care is continuing to rise and cost containment measures need to focus on inappropriate hospitalization. Armed Forces Medical Services ensure universal access to its consumers but continuous increase in patient load is stretching the capability of service hospitals. The present study was undertaken to determine the rate of inappropriate hospitalization in a large tertiary care service hospital.

Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP) was used to assess the appropriateness of hospital days, the study being carried out in the acute medical and acute surgical wards of the hospital on randomly selected days over a period of three months.

Inappropriate patient days were found to be 29.48% during the study period, with 34% of acute surgical patient days and 24.4% of acute medical patient days found to be inappropriate. No statistically significant difference was observed in the rate of inappropriate hospital stay between serving personnel and ex-servicemen. 31.25% non local patients as compared to 25.81% of local patients were found to have inappropriate hospital stays, though the difference was not found to be statistically significant. 60.71% of inappropriate stays were found in the initial period of admission (1-5 days), the phenomenon being observed both in the acute surgical and acute medical wards.

The study shows that the rate of inappropriate patient days is quite high among the study population and regular utilization reviews need to be carried out to conserve health care resources available with the service hospitals.