Case mix of elderly in-patients in the 29 hospitals in Lorraine in 1994 and 1995.

ABSTRACT

The creation of regional standardized medical information databases in relation with the French anonymous discharge dataset allows the study of the geriatric case mix processed in the Lorraine region for patients over 69. The age histogram (69 to 107 years) presents a two mode distribution with an important dip centered on 79 years probably in connection with the demography of Lorraine and the consequences of the First World War. These geriatric patients represent 17% of hospitalisations in public and private hospitals participating in the public sector. The case mix is related to the size of the hospital and to its juridical status. The bigger the size of an hospital, the less its activity is concentrated on a small number of disorders. Lung and heart diseases represent the first cause of hospitalisation in all hospitals. It is necessary to underline the limitation of an approach which uses the patients' individual hospitalisations, and which does not allow different stays of a given patient on the same hospital or between different hospitals to be linked. This approach prevents from appreciating the care network for this elderly population suffering from chronic diseases.