Patient deaths during the period of prolonged stay in cases of delayed discharge for nonclinical reasons at a university hospital: a cross sectional study

Background Delayed discharge for non-clinical reasons also affects patients in need of palliative care. Moreover, the number of people dying in hospitals has been increasing in recent years. Our aim was to describe characteristics of patients who died during prolonged stay, in comparison with the rest of patients with delayed discharge, in terms of length of hospital stay, patient characteristics and the context of care. Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study at a high complexity public hospital in Northern Spain (2007-2015) was conducted. To compare the differential characteristics of the groups of patients died during delayed discharge with the rest, Student's T test and Pearson's chi-square test (χ²) were used. Results A total of 198 patients died (6.57% of the total), with a mean total stay of 27.45 days and a prolonged stay of 10.69 days. Mean age 77.27 years. These were highly complex cases, 77.79% resided in the urban area, were admitted urgently (95.45%), to internal medicine or oncology wards, and the most common diagnosis was pneumonia. In people with terminal illness, clinicians can better identify when therapeutic possibilities are exhausted and acute hospitalization is not an adequate resource for their needs. Living in an urban area with the availability of palliative care hospital beds is related to the decision to die in hospital. ; Funding: This research has been funded by the Valdecilla Health Research Institute (IDIVAL). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Acknowledgements: The authors thank Fernando Rojo and Juan Carlos Dueñas, of Hospital Valdecilla, for their contribution to data acquisition, their support and the use of their facilities for the study. We would like to thank Valeria Rolle Sóñora, from the Biostatistics and Epidemiology Platform of the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Principado de Asturias (ISPA) for her guidance and advice on the statistical analysis of the study data.