Differences between long-stay and short-stay inpatients and estimation of length of stay. A prospective study.

To find possible differences between new long-stay inpatients and patients with shorter lengths of stay, a prospective study of 340 inpatients in the 4th week of hospitalization was carried out. The new long-stay patients differed from the others in diagnoses, symptoms, duration of prior hospitalizations, and socio-demographic data. On the basis of the data assessed in the 4th week of hospitalization, we tried not only to predict future new long-stay patients, but also to estimate the length of stay for all 340 patients. A time-function model was employed with length of stay as a continuous variable, and this resulted in correct allocation to the quartiles in 38-48% of the cases. Six variables proved to be important for estimating length of stay: emotional withdrawal, blunted affect, mannerisms, duration of previous hospitalizations, living conditions (prior to admission), and marital status.