[Mortality in internal medicine departments]

Abstract

Mortality is an important indicator of clinical activity. The aim of this paper is to analyze the mortality in Internal Medicine (IM) departments in our country taking into account the characteristics of the patients seen at our hospitals.

Material and methods: Patients attended at the IM Departments of Spanish hospitals during 2006 were analyzed through the CMBD (minimum basic set of data; in Spanish: <<Conjunto Mínimo Básico de Datos>>) which collects administrative and clinical data of all patients admitted to the public and private hospital of our state. Global and specific mortality by DRG were established and compared with the national standard published by the Spanish Health and Consume Ministry for that same year.

Results: In general hospitals of the National Health Service for the year 2006, 3,589,718 patients were discharged, 522,268 (14.5%) of them from IM departments. Of this last group, 46.6% were female, with a mean age of 70.4 years (SD 11.6) and a mean weight of 1.72 (SD 1.39). Global mortality was 9.5% compared to a national standard of 4.1%. Comparing by DRG, mortality was in general higher in IM.

Conclusions: Global mortality as well as specific mortality by DRG is higher than the general mortality. This could be explained by the characteristics of the population admitted in IM: older, seriously ill, with more co-morbidities, admitted trough the emergency department and consuming more resources than the general population.