Complex patients require complex care. Clinicians, hospital administrators, politicians and journalists sometimes suggest that a relentless, decades-long increase in patient complexity has contributed to strained hospital capacity, ballooning hospital costs, increased clinician burnout, and poor health system performance. Claims of increasing hospital inpatient complexity are intuitively appealing but rarely interrogated using empirical data.
Drs. Hiten Naik and John Staples recently completed a population-based study that evaluated trends in complexity over a 15-year period using linked administrative health data for 3.4 million non-elective hospitalizations in British Columbia. In this Work in Progress seminar, Drs. Naik and Staples will discuss their research and its implications for our health care system.