Recent Developments in Health Care Utilization at the Community Level

Recent developments in health care have changed hospital utilization at the community level. This study provided examples of these changes in the metropolitan area of Syracuse, New York. The study demonstrated that percent differences in discharges between the two time periods for both services changed little. For adult medicine, percent differences ranged between 16.5 and 18.0 percent while percent differences in adult surgery ranged from 23.25 to 24.93 percent. This information suggested that reductions in discharges during the five year period had stabilized. Most of these changes were associated with the movement of patients from inpatient to ambulatory care services. The largest numbers of these patients were associated with orthopedic surgery. They resulted from the movement of these patients who were at low severity of illness to ambulatory care settings. The study also identified increases in hospital lengths of stay for adult medicine and adult surgery between January-September 2019 and 2023 in the Syracuse hospitals. Adult medicine stays increased by 23.6 percent, from 4.84 to 5.98 days. Adult surgery stays increased by 25.5 percent, from 5.41 to 6.79 days.