{
 "id": "length-of-stay",
 "names": {
  "name": "Length of stay",
  "aliases": [
   "LOS",
   "ward nights",
   "inpatient days",
   "bed days"
  ],
  "said": "Hospitals abroad quote nights. Statisticians count days. A package that says three nights is describing a plan, not a measurement."
 },
 "etymology": {
  "root": "A compound of two plain words doing accounting work. Stay as a noun is 1520s, \"continuance in a place; stationary position\", from the verb, mid-15c., from Old French estai-, stem of estare, to stay or stand, from Latin stare, to stand or remain standing. Length is the quality of being long. Nothing in the phrase is medical; it names a duration somebody is paying for.",
  "first_attested": "1520s for the noun stay",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:etymonline-stay",
  "note": "Nights and days are not the same count everywhere, so the rule has to be named. The OECD counts a stay as the date of discharge minus the date of admission, which makes it a count of nights: admitted on the 25th and discharged on the 26th is one."
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "How long a patient occupies a hospital bed. On a price page it is a number of nights the seller has budgeted for; in a health statistic it is a measured average across discharges. The first is a forecast and the second is a result, and the word does not distinguish them.",
  "story": "On a package the number is a boundary. Bumrungrad's knee package names three nights in the surgical ward and excludes \"nights beyond 3, and any ICU\"; its hip package names four. Both figures are what the hospital has priced, not what a given knee will need. A fourth night is not a complication in the clinical sense and is still a bill.\n\nThe statistical version counts something else. The OECD calculates average length of stay by dividing bed-days by discharges, counting a stay as \"the date of discharge minus the date of admission\", and excludes day cases from the measure entirely — while counting as inpatient discharges \"[p]atients admitted as day-care patients but who have been retained overnight due to complication\". The unplanned night is exactly the event that moves an episode from one category to the other.\n\n*Trade practice —* the trade quotes the stay twice over and means different things each time: nights in the ward, and then days in the country before the surgeon will sign a fitness-to-fly note. The second number is longer than the first, and it is the one that sets the hotel bill, the companion's leave and the changeable fare.\n\n*Inference —* a short published stay is also a selling point, which gives the number a direction. Nothing on a package page is audited against what the ward recorded.",
  "how": "Three questions make a stay figure readable: whether the quoted number is nights or days and under whose rule; what a night past the package costs and whether that rate is published; and whether intensive care sits inside the count or outside it, which it usually does.",
  "today": "As of 17 September 2026 the stay figures on this site's procedure records are read off sellers' package pages and are labelled as such. National averages on the OECD definition measure discharges rather than packages, and the two cannot be substituted for one another."
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "in-hospital",
   "as": "The step this number is the length of.",
   "rel": "step"
  },
  {
   "to": "day-case",
   "as": "The stay of zero nights, and the category a package can quietly leave.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "package-price",
   "as": "Where the nights are fixed, and where the night after them is priced.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "to": "drg",
   "as": "The payment unit that made short stays profitable and long ones a loss.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "to": "knee-replacement",
   "as": "The operation whose three-night package this record reads.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "flying-after-surgery",
   "as": "The second, longer stay: days in the country before a seat is allowed.",
   "rel": "risk"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:etymonline-stay",
  "s:bumrungrad-joint04",
  "s:bumrungrad-joint08",
  "s:oecd-alos-metadata-2025"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "note": "the package figures are cited; the marked stretches are the trade's account and this project's reasoning"
   },
   "text.how": {
    "tier": "inference"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "schema": 1,
 "type": "term",
 "region": [
  "global"
 ],
 "updated": "2026-09-17",
 "facets": {
  "letter": "L"
 },
 "blurb": "How long a patient occupies a hospital bed. On a price page it is a number of nights the seller has budgeted for; in a health statistic it is a measured average across discharges.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "global",
   "name": "Everywhere",
   "note": "use for a node that belongs to no one country — a standard, a word, a risk"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "in-hospital",
   "type": "pathway",
   "name": "In hospital",
   "as": "The step this number is the length of.",
   "rel": "step"
  },
  {
   "to": "day-case",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Day case",
   "as": "The stay of zero nights, and the category a package can quietly leave.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "package-price",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Package price",
   "as": "Where the nights are fixed, and where the night after them is priced.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "to": "drg",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "DRG",
   "as": "The payment unit that made short stays profitable and long ones a loss.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "to": "knee-replacement",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Total knee replacement",
   "as": "The operation whose three-night package this record reads.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "flying-after-surgery",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Flying after surgery",
   "as": "The second, longer stay: days in the country before a seat is allowed.",
   "rel": "risk"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:etymonline-stay",
   "kind": "dictionary",
   "title": "stay (v.1), stay (n.3) — etymology",
   "publisher": "Online Etymology Dictionary, compiled by Douglas Harper",
   "url": "https://www.etymonline.com/word/stay",
   "accessed": "2026-09-17",
   "note": "mid-15c. / 1520s"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:bumrungrad-joint04",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Total Knee Replacement Surgery (Exclude implant) — package JOINT04",
   "publisher": "Bumrungrad International Hospital",
   "url": "https://www.bumrungrad.com/en/packages/total-knee-replacement-surgery",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "read off the hospital's own package page; price stated valid until 31 December 2026"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:bumrungrad-joint08",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Total Hip Replacement Surgery (Exclude implant) — package JOINT08",
   "publisher": "Bumrungrad International Hospital",
   "url": "https://www.bumrungrad.com/en/packages/total-hip-replacement-surgery",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "425,200 THB, four nights, implant excluded; price stated valid until 31 December 2026"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:oecd-alos-metadata-2025",
   "kind": "dataset",
   "title": "Hospital discharges and average length of stay by diagnostic categories — definitions, sources and methods",
   "publisher": "OECD Health Statistics 2025",
   "url": "https://stats.oecd.org/wbos/fileview2.aspx?IDFile=1aac08d9-99d5-4b52-9aa8-bbc8da33454b",
   "accessed": "2026-09-17",
   "note": "ALOS is bed-days divided by discharges, counted as date of discharge minus date of admission; day cases are excluded, and a day-care patient retained overnight because of a complication is counted as an inpatient discharge"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": "the package figures are cited; the marked stretches are the trade's account and this project's reasoning"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "inference"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  "etymology": {
   "tier": "cited"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "panchakarma",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Panchakarma",
   "as": "Here the stay is the product, not a consequence of the procedure.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "in-hospital",
   "type": "pathway",
   "name": "In hospital",
   "as": "The number the package fixed and the bill counts.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "asa-grade",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "ASA grade",
   "as": "The number the grade changes first.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "day-case",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Day case",
   "as": "The count this category is excluded from, and rejoins the moment a night is added.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "drg",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "DRG",
   "as": "The number a case rate made expensive, and the reason stays shortened everywhere it arrived.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ]
}