Mass. hospital stays lasting longer
Photo | Grant Welker
Milford Regional Medical Center
Patients in Massachusetts — at least pre-pandemic — are staying longer during hospitalizations at nearly five days on average.
That's one of a few notable trends in the past four years released this month by the Center for Health Information and Analysis, a state agency that tracks healthcare industry data.
A typical inpatient hospital stay in 2019 was 4.9 days, up 4% from three years prior, according to CHIA. Even with those slightly longer stays, inpatient volume remained essentially flat at a little more than 800,000 patient discharges annually.
Among other trends, Medicaid and Medicare share of inpatient payments fell slightly over the four-year period, dropping about 1% to 64% of discharges. Medicare alone made up 45% of such payments last year.
The oldest age range of patients, those 75 or older, made up a slightly larger share of all discharges at nearly one-quarter of all patient stays. That rate was up by 5% in the most recent three years.
About 16% of inpatient stays required intensive care in 2019, a rate that has stayed flat. The most common cause for an inpatient stay, other than childbirth, was septicemia or sepsis, heart failure, hip and knee replacements, and pneumonia.
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