Abstract:
Length of hospital stay has been used as an indicator of the quality of care in
the acute care setting. Prolonged length of hospital stay may result in patients
complications, a low rate of bed utilization, and high cost to both patients and the
hospital. The aim of this descriptive correlational study was to investigate the
relationship and the power of the selected patients factors including age, functional
ability, severity of illness, serum albumin level, acute confusional state, and the
number of medications used to mutually predict length of hospital stay of older
patients with medical problems in Ramathibodi Hospital. Purposive sampling was
used to recruit 211 patients aged 60 years and older who were admitted in medical
wards during May to August 2005. Data collection procedures were conducted after
the approval of the Ethics Committee of Ramathibodi Hospital. The seven instruments
used in the study were the record forms (demographic data, the number of medications
used, serum albumin level, and length of hospital stay) and the assessment forms
(Yamvongs Modified Barthel Activities of Daily Living Index, the Acute Physiologic
and Chronic Health Evaluation II, and the Thai version of the Confusional Assessment
Method). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Spearman rank order
correlation, and multiple regression with the Enter method.
The analysis revealed that the length of hospital stay ranged from 2 to 64 days
with a mean of 10 days. Functional ability at admission and serum albumin level were
significantly negatively correlated with length of hospital stay, whereas acute
confusional state was significantly positively correlated with length of hospital stay.
The findings indicated that a higher level of functional ability at admission and serum
albumin level including no acute confusional state were correlated to a shorter length
of hospital stay. However, age, severity of illness, and the number of medications used
were not significantly correlated with the length of hospital stay. All variables could
jointly explain 15% of the variance in length of hospital. Functional ability at
admission emerged as the strongest predictor of length of hospital stay of medical
older patients followed by acute confusional state.
The results suggest that to shorten the length of hospital stay of older patients,
improvement of nutritional status before hospitalization, early ambulation to improve
functional ability of older patients, and prevention of acute confusional state during
hospitalization should be promoted.