McCorkle L P
Health Serv Res. 1966 Summer;1(1):91-114.
The lengths of hospital stay among adult inpatients discharged during 1962 from the medical and surgical specialty departments of a large urban university-affiliated general hospital have been examined. Data are shown comparing the durations of hospitalization of patients who had a private physician directly responsible for their hospital care (private patients) and of those who did not (staff patients). The relation between the lengths of stay of private patients and those of staff patients varied considerably from one hospital department to another. On the medical services, staff patients had longer hospital stays than did private patients, a discrepancy that could not be accounted for by differences between the two groups in age, race, sex, or source of payment for hospitalization and it is being studied further. A major cause of the apparent difference in lengths of hospitalization between private and staff surgical patients proved to be inconsistencies in the criteria used to define the terms “hospital admission” and “inpatient” among various patient groups. Some of the possible effects of variations in the definition of these terms and of the terms “medical patients” and “surgical patients” in hospital-use studies are discussed.
对一家大型城市大学附属医院内科和外科专科在1962年出院的成年住院患者的住院时长进行了调查。数据显示了由私人医生直接负责其住院护理的患者（自费患者）和没有私人医生负责的患者（医护人员患者）的住院时长对比情况。自费患者和医护人员患者的住院时长关系在不同医院科室之间有很大差异。在内科，医护人员患者的住院时间比自费患者长，两组在年龄、种族、性别或住院费用支付来源方面的差异无法解释这种差异，对此正在进一步研究。自费手术患者和医护人员手术患者住院时长明显不同的一个主要原因是，不同患者群体对“住院”和“住院患者”这两个术语的定义标准不一致。讨论了这些术语以及“内科患者”和“外科患者”术语定义的差异在医院使用研究中可能产生的一些影响。
