What makes the hospitalisation system more efficient? An application of the decomposition method to Hong Kong morbidity data

Yip, Paul S F; Lee, Carmen K M; Chow, Chun-Bong; Lo, William T L

First, it is a non-parametric method and can be used only as an exploratory method. Second, we assume the workload on the medical and health workers per hospitalized day for any patient is the same, which is unlikely to be true. It is has been reported that the implementation of day surgery arrangements-as opposed to admitting the patient a day earlier-has indeed caused excessive workload for medical and healthcare workers. A simple count of the number of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 However, a quick discharge may also generate a number of problems, for example, pressure on professionals (doctors and nurses) as well as a larger workload to the follow-up specialist outpatient care; pressure on other health care sectors such as nursing homes, and risk of rapid readmission. Thus, while reducing length of stay, controlling health care expenditure and a good quality care or satisfaction of health care are the key challenges we have to balance and confront.