The Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital : triennial statistical report : years 1955-1957 / edited by E. H. Hare.

Date:
[1959]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital : triennial statistical report : years 1955-1957 / edited by E. H. Hare. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “discharge” is used in the present report. An in-patient discharge is the discharge of a patient at the end of a spell of care which included a period of in-patient care. An out-patient discharge is the discharge of a patient at the end of a spell of care which did not include a period of in-patient care. A hospital discharge is the discharge of a patient at the end of any spell of care. Because each hospital discharge must be either an in-patient discharge or an out-patient discharge, the total number of hospital discharges equals the sum of the in-patient and out-patient discharges. E. Patients discharged. During any triennium many patients have more than one spell of care at the hospital. Thus the number of patients discharged from the departments or from the hospital is less than the number of corresponding discharges. The patients are classed as either in-patients or out-patients or hospital patients. This can be seen in Table 1, where the number of adult in-patients, for example, was 3,580, but the number of in-patient discharges was 3,942. Because the same patient may be discharged as an in-patient on one occasion and as an out-patient on another occasion, the sum of in-patients and out-patients will in general be greater than the number of hospital patients. This can also be seen from Table 1; the number of adult in-patients plus out-patients is 3,580+ 6,229, or 9,809, while the number of hospital patients is 9,554. In other words, 255 patients were discharged from the in-patient department on one occasion and from the out-patient department on another occasion during the triennium. F. New Patients. These are patients who, during the triennium, attend and are discharged from the hospital for the first time in their lives. A new in-patient is one who completes his first-ever spell of in-patient care; a new out-patient is one who completes his first- ever spell of out-patient care; and a new hospital patient is one who completes his first-ever spell of care at the hospital, whether as an in-patient or as an out-patient. Because a patient may qualify as a new in-patient on one occasion and as a new out-patient on another occasion, the sum of new in-patients and new out-patients will in general be greater than the number of new hospital patients (see Table 3). It should be remembered that new patients are not equivalent to the “first admissions” of the Registrar General’s reports on mental health, for new patients to the Bethlem-Maudsley Hospital may previously have received psychiatric treatment at other hospitals. G. Cases. The word case has been used loosely in this report. Its appropriate meaning is mostly obvious from the context, but in general it has been taken to refer to a patient receiving a par¬ ticular spell of care. 3
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