Trends and projections for day only admissions in NSW acute hospitals.

The rapid increase in the number of day only admissions during the last decade has led to an increased awareness of this type of hospital admission. Health planners are now interested in which procedures are causing the increase in the day only activity and how best to accommodate it in the future. To address these issues, routinely collected hospital data were used to analyse trends in day only admissions and to extrapolate future demand via regression models. The results suggest that day only admissions will constitute 45% of all admissions to NSW acute hospitals by the year 2001. Detailed review of patient caseloads suggest that 13.5% of all patients will be potentially treatable through day surgery units, as opposed to general wards, by 2001. Assuming 80% of these potential patients actually do get treated in day surgery units, then the workload generated could be accommodated within 30 day surgery facilities.