[Morbidity, mortality and other indicators of health care activities, at a General Internal Medicine Service].

More than 50% of all health care expenses are incurred in hospitals, without objectively knowing many times their actual performance. Identification, sex, age, admission channel, date of admission, date of discharge, diagnosis and destination were recorded at discharge for all a local hospital. During those years, 6,410 patients were admitted in such Service (60.18% men and 39.18 women), with an average age of 63 years: 75% of all cases were emergencies, the average length of stay was 3.8 days and the occupation rate, 97.2%. 2.62% patients were referred to another center. The most frequent disease were cardiovascular (24.6%), respiratory (21.6%) and digestive (16.9%). The most frequent nosological entities were: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (12%), acuter strokes (6.3%), cardiac failure (6.5%), ischemic cardiopathies (6.5%), high digestive hemorrhage (5.6%) and pneumonia (4.3%). The most frequent malignant tumors were those affecting lung, rectum-colon and hematologic. The average mortality rate was 4.3%, mainly due to malignant tumors and acute strokes. Diabetes mellitus and arterial hypertension were the most frequent associated diseases.