A simple descriptive analysis of hospital admissions’ progress: a case study of the Greatest Public Gene- ral Hospital, Athens, Greece

Abstract

This paper studies the progress of hospital admissions over the time period 1995-2005 for the largest Greek general public hospital. Daily admissions data, disaggregated into elective and emergency were collected from the IT Department of the hospital. Great seasonality for hospital admissions was found. They reduce during weekends, the summer months and official holidays.  Emergency admissions are at their peak in the beginning of the week and decline afterwards. During weekends, emergency admissions decrease by 25%. The majority of hospital elective admissions enter into the hospital from Monday to Thursday. During Friday and weekends, elective hospital admissions fall sharply, by 63%. However, on Sunday, they slightly increase. The mean number of total hospital admissions increased by 17% from 1995 to 2005. This increase in total admissions results from the significant increase of elective admissions (by 56%) and not from the emergency admissions that fell by 17%.