Study: Shorter Hospital Stays Not Harmful

Getting patients out of the hospital quickly doesn’t have to hurt care, a new study suggests. The study looked at 129 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals. It covered a 14-year period ending in 2010. In that time, the average length of stay in the hospital dropped 27%. Researchers had thought that the rate of readmission — returning to the hospital within 30 days — might increase. But readmissions also dropped. This suggests that most people were not discharged too early. Deaths within 30 and 90 days after leaving the hospital also dropped. Researchers said some aspects of the VA system may help explain the results. Medical care in VA hospitals is provided by hospitalists. These are doctors who care only for people in the hospital. They don’t see patients in an office. The use of hospitalists has been linked with higher quality of care.