Half of the days of acute care hospitalization are concentrated in 11% of patients who have accumulated at least 21 days in hospital over two years. These are often elderly people, according to medical statistics 2017-2019.
Hospitalizations represent almost a quarter of total health expenditure in Switzerland each year. It is therefore interesting to better understand the characteristics of the people who must make significant use of it, writes the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) on Monday.
In 2017, 963,000 people were hospitalized for acute somatic care. In the two years following their first hospitalization, they accumulated nearly 9.2 million hospital days. However, half of these days focus on only 107,000 patients (11% of the total) counting at least 21 days in the hospital.
The category of patients who spent at least 46 days in hospital alone accounts for a quarter of all hospital days, although only representing 3% of all hospitalized people.
75 years and over
People with a high number of days in hospital (at least 21) are often elderly: 46% of them are at least 75 years old, which is almost three times more than among people hospitalized for a shorter period (17%) .
This generally high age should not obscure the fact that more than 2,400 children under one year of age also spent at least 21 days in hospital over a two-year period. Four-fifths of them are newborns, suffering at birth mainly from respiratory ailments or abnormalities linked to too short a gestation period or insufficient weight.
Four in ten people with at least 21 days of hospitalization have a tumor (16%), a disease of the circulatory system (16%) or a disease of the respiratory system (8%) . Almost one in four people hospitalized for a tumor has at least 21 days of hospitalization over a two-year period. This proportion is almost a fifth for people with cardiovascular disease.
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