Evaluation of Appropriate and Inappropriate Admission and Hospitalization Days According to Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP).

BACKGROUND Inappropriate admission and hospitalization days are the factors that impose more costs to hospitals. By considering current condition of hospitals, it is vital to have an insight into the data on inappropriate admission and hospitalization days in order to eliminate obstacles to the proper and appropriate hospitalization. METHODS In this study, 198 patients who were admitted to receive surgical or non-surgical treatment in Sina public hospital were selected. An appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP) was used for data collection. The validity of AEP is well established by the preceding studies. In order to achieve the study objectives, binary logistic regression test was used. RESULTS According to our findings, 39.4% of hospitalization days and 16.2% of admissions are inappropriate. In this study, inappropriate admission was observed among married patients eight times more than among single ones. Inappropriate hospitalization days were 12 times more prevalent among patients from provinces than among those from Tehran. With increasing age of the patient the probability of inappropriate admission decreases slightly, i.e. the probability of inappropriate admission decreases 10% as the age increases one year. The number of hospitalization days was significantly correlated to the following parameters: type of admission, patient's city of residence, type of treatment, and length of stay (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION Regarding the results of this study, a large number of admissions and specially hospitalization days are inappropriate. According to other studies, with suitable programming many inappropriate admissions and hospitalization days are preventable.