The Bureau of Health Information’s (BHI) latest special analysis provides insights into variation in average length of stay across NSW public hospitals for four common conditions.

The length of time patients spend in hospital has a considerable impact on health system costs and resourcing. While some factors that drive longer lengths of stay are outside a hospital’s control, variation across hospitals suggests there may be opportunities to increase efficiencies by reducing length of stay.

Efforts to support safe and successful returns home as soon as possible can also improve patients’ experiences of care.

The Special Reporting sections of Healthcare Quarterly report offer additional analyses to support further understanding of the context and drivers for key activity and performance measures. In this quarter, it builds on BHI’s routine 'length of stay’ reporting in Healthcare Quarterly, which showed a marked and sustained increase during the pandemic.

The Special Reporting section of Healthcare Quarterly, October to December 2023 shares the results of additional analyses to highlight how average length of stay varies across NSW public hospitals. It focusses on four common clinical conditions and surgical procedures (cellulitis – a common bacterial infection of the skin, heart failure, hip replacement and knee replacement).

This issue includes:

• Five-year trends in numbers of admission and average length of stay at the NSW level for each clinical condition and surgical procedure
• Variation in average length of stay by hospital for each clinical condition and surgical procedure in
  2022–23.

As examples, the results show that average length of stay for hip replacement ranged from 3.2 to 5.8 days across hospitals, and from 2.9 to 5.5 days for heart failure. BHI utilised statistical modelling to identify hospitals with average length of stay significantly higher or lower than NSW, after taking into account differences in the types of patients they serve (e.g. age, gender and comorbidities).

The results can be used by health system managers to identify where there are potential opportunities for reducing length of stay.

The report is now available here.