Press Release 27/02/2020

HOSPITAL MORBIDITY STATISTICS. HOSPITALS TOTAL. 2018

248,580 hospital admissions were registered in the Basque Country in 2018, up 1.3%

50% of admissions corresponded to people aged 65 and over

Hospitals in the Basque Country, regardless of their overall care figures, registered 248,580 admissions in 2018, 1.3% up on the previous year, according to Eustat data, which represented 5.1% of the total for Spain as a whole. This figure includes acute care, medium and long-stay and psychiatric hospitals. With regard to the ownership of the hospital, it is worth noting that in the Basque Country the proportion of admissions in public hospitals (83%) was greater than in all of Spain (73%).

According to the overall care figures, 94.8% of admissions were in acute care hospitals (235,634 admissions), 4.1% in medium and long-stay hospitals (10,184 admissions) and 1.1% (2,762) in psychiatric hospitals.

The proportion of men admitted to hospital (50.5%) was similar to that of women (49.5%), whilst nationally women predominated (52.1%). People aged 65 and over attended hospitals more frequently and represented half of all admissions (50.4%). For Spain, this figure was 45.9%.

The main causes of hospital admissions, as in Spain as a whole, were respiratory, circulatory and digestive diseases, which accounted for 38.8% of admissions (37.9% in Spain), although, unlike in 2017, respiratory diseases were ahead of circulatory and digestive diseases, and became the main reason for admission to hospital in the Basque Country and Spain (13.2% and 13%, respectively). On the other hand, the group of hospital stays associated with pregnancy, childbirth and post-natal care occupied seventh place in the Basque Country with 7% of admissions, whereas in Spain it was situated in sixth place (8.7%), ahead of diseases affecting the musculoskeletal system.

The aforementioned three groups of diseases accounted for 33.8% of hospital admissions in the case of women and 43.7% in that of men (nationally 32.2% and 44.1%, respectively).

Taking into account the overall care figures, the pattern in medium and long-stay and psychiatric hospitals, with 5.2% 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 45.5% of admissions corresponded to diseases of the respiratory system (27.5%) or the circulatory system (18%) and the average length of stay was 20 days. In the case of psychiatric hospitals, 93% of cases treated corresponded to mental and behavioural disorders, among which schizophrenia was the main reason for admission.

Methodological note

This statistical operation has been carried out in collaboration with the National Institute of Statistics-INE.

For reasons of comparability with international statistics, 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.es Tel: 945 01 75 62