Potentially avoidable hospitalisation for constipation in Victoria, Australia in 2010–11

BMC Gastroenterology

Research Article

Zahid Ansari¹  Humaira Ansari²  Bridget R Southwell³  John M Hutson⁴ 

[1] School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia;Surgical Research Group, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Flemington Road, 3052, ParkvilleVictoria, Australia;Surgical Research Group, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Flemington Road, 3052, ParkvilleVictoria, Australia;Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, 3052, Parkville, Victoria, Australia;Surgical Research Group, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Flemington Road, 3052, ParkvilleVictoria, Australia;Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, 3052, Parkville, Victoria, Australia;Department of Urology, Royal Children’s Hospital, 3052, Parkville, Victoria, Australia;

关键词: Constipation;    Emergency Admission;    Local Government Area;    Principal Diagnosis;    Cost Weight;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-230X-14-125

 received in 2014-01-29, accepted in 2014-07-09,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundWhen primary care of constipation fails, the patient may need emergency hospitalisation for disimpaction. This study aimed to provide population-based data on the number of unplanned admissions and the cost to the healthcare system for constipation in Victoria, Australia in financial year 2010–11.MethodsThe Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset was examined to find the number of emergency hospital separations coded as constipation (ICD-10-AM Code K390). An estimate of costs was determined from the number of weighted inlier equivalent separations (WIES) multiplied by the WEIS price, used by the Victorian Government for funding purposes.ResultsThere were 3978 emergency separations for constipation in Victoria in 2010–2011, 92% in public hospitals. Fifty-five percent were female and 38% > 75 years old. One third stayed overnight and 1/3 more than 1 day. The emergency bed day rate was 7.1 per 10,000 of population. The estimate of cost, based on WEIS, was approximately $8.3 million. Potential savings could be made by reducing the number of separations in 6 Local Government Areas (LGAs).ConclusionsThis study shows that the burden (in number of admissions, emergency bed days and overall direct costs) in managing emergency admissions for constipation in Victoria, Australia, is very significant and likely to be similar in other developed countries. Improved primary healthcare and alternative ways to achieve faecal disimpaction without emergency admission could save the public health system a proportion of this $8.3 million.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ansari et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.