2001 National Hospital Discharge Survey. (Health Care Industry).

"The 32.7 million patients in the nation's hospitals in 2001 had a much shorter stay on average (4.9 days) than patients hospitalized in 1970 (7.8 days). Over the past three decades, the average length of a hospital stay dropped for all patients, except children, with the most dramatic decrease experienced by elderly patients whose hospital stay in 2001 (5.8 days) was less than half of what it had been in 1970 (12.6 days).

In 2001, most inpatients stayed in the hospital for 3 days or less (Figure 3).

In 2001, as in earlier years, the most frequent reason for hospitalization was heart disease, accounting for 4.3 million discharges. While the rate of …