Elderly people constitute an ever growing part of short-stay hospital patients. At the moment, 25% of these patients age aged 75 or more. The demographic curve, the effect of public health policies favouring treatment at home and the new characteristics of demand for care by the oldest patients will undoubtedly result in an increasing number of these hospitalizations. This tendency has repercussions on the organization of hospital structures, but it also raises the problems of specificity of consumption of goods and medical hospital units by elderly patients and of their financing as part of budget allotments. The progressive but imperative installation, forced on us by decrees, of medicalized management tools (e.g. the Information System Medicalization Programme) in public hospitals and some private clinics throws doubt on the value of this tool to describe the stays of elderly people.