[Patients in Norwegian hospitals. Length of stay and patterns of use]

All 633,987 periods of admission to Norwegian general hospitals in 1991 were analyzed. The length of stay increases considerably with the patient's age. 80-year old patients stay three times as long in hospital as five-year old patients. The typical surgical patient requires 56% more resources than the typical medical patient. For surgical patients, the mean length of stay was 7.2 days, and for medical patients it was 6.8 days. Patients in the age group 70-79 years require almost twice as much resources as the youngest patients. Patients up to the age of 65 who live in a municipality where there is a hospital stay in hospital just as long as corresponding patients from municipalities without a hospital. For older patients there are significant differences in length of stay for these two categories of patients. The discharge rate for men of 70 years and older is significantly higher than the rate for women in the same age group, but the women stay longer in hospital.