Timing of social work intervention and medical patient's length of hospital stay.

Findings report that hospital inpatients who receive social work intervention present difficult problems and have longer-than-average lengths of stay and that the earlier in the hospitalization that intervention occurs, the shorter the stay will be. A total of 243 patients referred for social services at a 440-bed teaching hospital were evaluated. Paired t-tests indicated a significant difference in the mean length of stay based on normative data. Timing of the intervention accounted for a significant amount of variance (13 percent) in length of hospital stay. The major clinical implications of the study are that social work intervention has the potential to decrease length of hospitalization, and that this methodology may be used reliably to evaluate changes in discharge planning protocol.