Factors influencing length of hospital stay

This study highlighted a number of factors perceived as highly important in predicting length of inpatient stay for psychiatric patients. Prominent among them, in decreasing order, were symptomatology (including severity of illness), level of adaptive functioning, social supports, specific psychiatric disorders, chronicity of illness, and insurance coverage. Availability of alternative modes of care, a write-in factor, was also considered important. The respondents tended to be consistent in their judgment of the overall importance of most of these factors regardless of their professional discipline or the clinical population they worked with. However, certain variations in ranking were apparent. For example, while the clinicians considered symptomatology to be the most important determinant of length of hospital stay, the administrators considered social supports to be the most important factor. The implications of these different perceptions deserve further research.