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QuickStats: Average Length of Hospital* Stay, by Diagnostic Category† --- United States, 2003

* Only hospitals with an average length of stay of <30 days for all patients (including mental hospitals) and general hospitals or children's general hospitals are included in the survey. Federal, military, and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, hospital units of institutions (e.g., prison hospitals), and hospitals with fewer than six beds staffed for patient use are excluded.

† Categories with >1 million hospital discharges. International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM). ICD-9-CM codes for psychoses 290--299; malignant neoplasm 140--208, 230--234; pneumonia 480--486; fractures 800--829; heart disease 391--392.0, 393--398, 402, 404, 410--416, 420--429; and delivery V27.

In 2003, patients in six diagnostic categories had >1 million hospital discharges. The categories were heart disease (4.4 million), delivery (4.0 million), psychoses (1.6 million), pneumonia (1.4 million), malignant neoplasms (1.3 million), and fractures (1.1 million). The average length of hospital stay for patients with these diagnoses ranged from 2.6 days for deliveries to 8.0 days for psychoses.

SOURCE: DeFrances CJ, Hall MJ, Podgornik MN. 2003 National Hospital Discharge Survey. Advance data from Vital and Health Statistics; no. 359. Hyattsville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics; 2005. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad359.pdf.

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Date last reviewed: 7/13/2005

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