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

Here we define the hospitalized days per person (HD) as the total number of hospitalized days in all public hospitals during the examining year (D) divided by the total population in the same year (P). The average population-based hospitalized days is expressed as: where E and I denote the total number of hospital admission episodes and the distinct number of hospitalized individuals, respectively. Equation (ii) contains three components: (1) the ratio (D/E) is the number of hospitalized days to the number of hospital admission episodes, which is the mean duration of stay in hospital; (2) the ratio (E/I) is the mean number of inpatients in episodes to that in individuals, which is the mean number of hospital admission per person; and (3) the ratio (I/P) is the number of individuals to the total population, which is the hospitalization rate in the community.