Question

In a business unit of the hospital, there are three measures of Admission/Discharge/Transfer of patients for unit intensity: midnight census, inverse length of stay (LOS), and the ADT work intensity index. Define and explain each measure also provide an example.

Answer 1

MIDNIGHT CENSUS:

Midnight census is an accounting of the number of residents living in a health care facility at night. It may differ from the day time census because some patients may travel to more than one facility to receive more specialised care services. For instance, a patient got admitted in a cardiac ward for a bypass surgery. On the same day, the doctors visited the patient and planned for surgery on the very next day. The patient is included in the ward census. On the next day, the patient shifted to the operation theatre and after surgery to cardio-thoracic intensive care unit (CT-ICU). So, now the patient is shifted to CT-ICU for better specialized services and now the patient is included in the CT-ICU census not in the ward census.

INVERSE LENGTH OF STAY (LOS)

Length of stay meaning a patient's day of admission in the hospital till the day of discharge. In other words, the number of days a patient stayed in a hospital for a treatment. For instance, from the above mentioned example, the patient got admitted in the hospital for cardiac surgery on 13/09/2019. On 14th of October, surgery been done and shifted to CT-ICU for better specialized services. When the condition got stable, the patient may shift to ward and then discharged on 22/09/2019. The time period from the day of admission till discharge is called Length of Stay (LOS)