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Table 1 Hospital and patient characteristics of the study sample

From: Association of admission and patient characteristics with quality of discharge letters: posthoc analysis of a retrospective study

Hospital characteristicsa

 

 Inpatient admissions (n)

4048

 Hospital deaths n (%)

2025 (50.0)

 Type of hospital n (%)

  University hospital

799 (19.7)

  Tertiary teaching

1642 (40.6)

  General

1607 (39.7)

Patient characteristicsa,b

  Male sex %

50.2

  Age (y), mean (SD)

60.5 (20.9)

  Charlson index of comorbidity %

   Score > =3

3.7

Admission characteristicsa,b

  Length of hospital stay (d), mean (SD/median)

6.3 (14.6/3)

  Urgently admitted patients %

54.7

  Admission is a readmission %

26.7

  Admission is followed by an unplanned readmission %

17.7

 Hospital departments %,

  Surgery

21.7

  Cardiology

13.7

  Internal medicine

18.7

  Orthopaedics

11.2

  Neurology

6.8

  Lung diseases

6.9

  Ear, nose and throat

3.6

  Urology

4.9

  Other

12.6

Presence of adverse eventsa,b

 One or more positive screening criteria in record n (%)

2632 (44.7)

 Adverse events n (%)

390 (7.1)

 Preventable adverse events n (%)

108 (1.6)

  1. a Patient admissions of obstetrics, psychiatry, <1 year and <24 h for non-deceased patients were excluded
  2. b Patient characteristics are weighted for overrepresentation of deceased patients and hospital type