Hospital length of stay of frail elderly patients. Primary care by general internists versus geriatricians.

Hospitalized patients in a medical diagnosis-related group (DRG) who were cared for by physicians in a division of Geriatric Medicine (geriatric group) were compared with a control group drawn from a stratified random sample of patients cared for by general internists (internist group) in the same hospital. Despite an older age, longer predicted length of stay, and higher DRG reimbursement, the geriatric group patients had a significantly shorter length of stay (8.8 vs 15.8 days; P less than 0.05) than the internist group. A shorter length of stay for the geriatric group was noted in each of five subgroups, sorted by admission and discharge status. Comparison to national data reveals that, despite the shorter length of stay in the geriatric group, length of stay data used by hospitals for management purposes would still classify the patients of the geriatrics group as "revenue losers" under the Medicare hospital reimbursement system.