A descriptive study on reasons for prolonged hospital stay in a tertiary hospital in Singapore

Abstract

As Singapore's health care landscape faces a rapidly ageing society, growing burden of chronic disease and rising health care cost, there is an impetus need for us to review our hospital's discharge planning process and length of hospital stay. Length of hospital stay is one of the indicators that reflects the total cost of care during hospitalization (Lim et al., 2006) and a pressing concern among health care administrators (Costa et al., 2012). Prolonged hospital stay is defined as patients staying for more than 21 days in an acute hospital (Lateef, 2015).An ageing population can increase the burden on health care system including greater utilization of hospital beds, resources, cost and longer length of hospital stay (Hendy et al., 2012;Maguire et al., 1986;Toh et al., 2017). In addition, prolonged hospital stay in an acute hospital is associated with an increased risk of patients developing hospital-acquired infection and disrupts patient flow and access to care, especially when acute hospitals are experiencing bed

Discharge Delay

“…Having caregivers involved in the DC plan early seems to be a way to disrupt a DC delay. A reason for DC delay can include waiting for a new caregiver to arrive or the family is still trying to decide on the DC disposition (Towle et al, 2021).…”