Factors Affecting Length of Hospital Stay of Diabetes Patients; A Case Study at Ratchaburi Hospital

Abstract

Diabetes remains one of major health problems for oldness in Thailand. Unwell self-care behaviors and poor health treatment might lead to complication diseases of diabetes patients. These issues impact on long length of hospital stay for receiving treatment. Therefore, this paper is aimed to examine, factors affecting length of stay at hospital, comparing length of stay with standard length and self-behaviors of diabetes patients. We focus on a case study of diabetes patients at Ratchaburi hospital. Data were collected from Ratchaburi hospital register in the fiscal year 2011 to 2015, which comprise 1,541 cases. Zero-truncated Poisson regression and zero-truncated negative binomial regression are employed to analysis length of stay data. The results show that, age, married status, complication diseases including hypertension, disorder of lipoprotein metabolism, hyperlipidaemia, hypokalaemia, chronic kidney disease and others were significantly associated with length of stay. As a result of comparison length of stay at hospital of patients with standard average length of stay, it is found that the length of stay is less than or equal the standard. The study of self-care behaviors from 300 respondents shows that diabetes patients are well self-care behaviors in overall. However, patients are only fairly self-care behaviors to control their emotional and social life.