Finkler S A, Brooten D, Brown L
Graduate School of Public Administration, New York University, NY 10003.
Inquiry. 1988 Summer;25(2):271-80.
In the last several years many hospitals have experienced a significant reduction in average length of stay (LOS). We know relatively little about whether such reductions are likely to be accompanied by proportional reductions in the utilization of all inpatient services or whether services are merely condensed into a shorter time frame. Average patient severity may well rise as a result of shortened LOS, causing daily resource consumption to rise. In this paper, however, we hypothesize that patients with shorter LOS consume significantly fewer resources. Our empirical results support the hypothesis for some, but not all, of the services were examined.
在过去几年中，许多医院的平均住院时长（LOS）显著缩短。对于这种缩短是否会伴随着所有住院服务利用率的相应降低，或者服务是否仅仅被压缩到更短的时间框架内，我们了解得相对较少。由于住院时长缩短，患者的平均病情严重程度很可能会上升，导致每日资源消耗增加。然而，在本文中，我们假设住院时长较短的患者消耗的资源显著更少。我们的实证结果支持了这一假设，但只是针对部分而非所有所考察的服务。
