Health Foundation long read (PDF version) - What’s driving increasing length of

• The number of recorded patients in hospital with COVID-19 has fallen dramatically since the start of 2021, with hospitalisation and survival rates improving greatly since the start of the pandemic. [...] The aim of this analysis is to build this understanding by examining the extent to which changes in clinical needs, including COVID-19, might explain the increase in the length of stays and to explore the possible implications for health services and policymakers. [...] Due to the challenge of distinguishing the length of stay for each condition, if COVID-19 was documented in the hospital record, we considered the entire stay a COVID- 19-related admission. [...] Average length of stay adjusted for age, clinical complexity and COVID-19 To understand how much the increase in average length of stay can be explained by these factors, we first analysed the change in length of stay for non-COVID admissions. [...] The substantial differences in average length of stay between non-COVID admissions and all emergency admissions suggest that COVID-19 admissions drove most of the increase in average length of stay in 2022.