Hospitalized Morbidity & Utilization of Beds in a Rural Health Training Centre

Abstract

Background: Morbidity consumes a substantial portion of health care resources in a hospital. The overload

in hospital ward remains a major source of concern in many countries, including India, for policy makers.

The availability of beds is perhaps the single most important factor in determination of the hospital utilization

in a country. Objective: To determine the pattern of hospitalized morbidity, hospital bed utilization by

different morbidity and length of stay in the Rural Health Training Centre (RHTC). Observation: A total

of 528 patients were admitted in RHTC of which max, 53% were females with mean age of male and

female patients were 48.15yrs (SD=19.22) and 40.39yrs (SD=16.64) respectively. Max, 22.9% patients

were in age group 26-35 years. Max. 38.6% hospitalized morbidity was mainly due to viral fever followed

by gastroenteritis, 21.5% and among the total anaemic admissions, higher proportion, 70% was belonged to

females. Length of stay due to hospitalised morbidity range from one to four days of which max length of

stay was seen in age 46 to 55 yrs and mainly due to enteric fever.

Overall bed occupancy rate due to hospitalized morbid condition during study period was 54.92%. Bed

occupancy rate was high, 17.91% due to viral fever followed by gastroenteritis, 15.05%, and enteric fever

(10.38%) respectively. However, maximum length of hospital stay ,4 days was mainly due to enteric

fever and variation within disease about the length of stay in hospital is found significant. Conclusion:

Hospitalized utilization in rural area is mainly due to infectious diseases and need efforts to sensitize the

poor and neglected sector of rural community to access the health care services for positive health.