Press Release 13/02/2019

HOSPITAL MORBIDITY STATISTICS. 2017

83% of hospital admissions in the Basque Country were treated in public hospitals

Admissions due to pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal care occupied seventh place in the Basque Country and fifth place in Spain

Hospitals in the Basque Country registered 245,409 admissions in 2017, which was 5% of the total for Spain as a whole, situating the Basque Country as the seventh Autonomous Region in this domain, according to Eustat data. Additionally, 82.8% of hospital admissions originated from public hospitals, 10 percentage points above the Spanish average (72.5%).

According to the overall care figures, 94.9% of admissions were in acute care hospitals, 4% in medium and long-stay hospitals and 1.1% in psychiatric hospitals.

The proportion of men admitted to hospital (50.2%) was similar to that of women (49.8%), whilst nationally women predominated (52.3%). People aged 65 and over attended hospitals more frequently and represented half of all admissions. For Spain, this figure was 45.3%.

The main causes of hospital admissions, as in Spain as a whole, were circulatory, digestive and respiratory diseases, which accounted for 38.2% of admissions (37.2% in Spain); however, the group of hospital stays associated with pregnancy, childbirth and post-natal care occupied seventh place in the Basque Country with 7.5% of admissions, whereas in Spain it was situated in fifth place (9.2%).

The aforementioned three groups of diseases accounted for 32.8% of hospital admissions in the case of women and 43.5% in that of men (nationally 31.5% and 43.6%, respectively).

Taking into account the overall care figures, the pattern in medium and long-stay and psychiatric hospitals, with 5.1% of admissions, was different to that of acute care hospitals, in terms of both the pathologies treated and the length of stay in hospital.

In medium and long-stay hospitals almost half of the admissions corresponded to diseases of the respiratory system (27.6%) or the circulatory system (19.6%) and the average length of stay was 20 days. In the case of psychiatric hospitals, 94.1% of cases treated corresponded to mental and behavioural disorders, including, in particular, schizophrenia, for which the average length of stay was more than 6 months.

Methodological note

This operation has been undertaken in cooperation with the Spanish National Institute of Statistics-INE. For reasons of comparability, the hospital admissions mode only takes into account admissions with a stay equal to or greater than 1 day, that is, admissions with 0 days are not counted. The length of stay is calculated as the number of days between the date of admission and the date of discharge, without taking into account the time of admission or discharge.

For further information:

Eustat - Euskal Estatistika Erakundea / Basque Statistics Institute C/ Donostia-San Sebastián, 1 01010 Vitoria-Gasteiz Press Service: servicioprensa@eustat.eus Tel: 945 01 75 62