Risky release Uninsured patients discharged earlier from Nurse.com

Patients without insurance have significantly shorter hospital stays than patients with insurance, raising concerns that hospitals may have incentive to release these patients earlier to reduce their own costs of uncompensated care, according to a study.

Researchers analyzed nationally representative data on a weighted sample of more than 90 million hospitalizations between 2003 and 2007 of patients ages 18 to 64. They found that across all hospital types (for-profit, nonprofit and government), the average length of stay for preventable hospitalizations — those thought to be avoidable with the use of appropriate preventive care and disease management — was significantly shorter for individuals without insurance (2.77 days) than for those with either private insurance (2.89 days) or Medicaid (3.19 days).

For patients hospitalized for other diagnoses, the average length of stay was also shorter for uninsured patients (2.74 days) than for those with private insurance (2.86) or Medicaid (3.13).

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