Research finds patients have shorter stays at less busy hospitals after emergency surgery

New research has made the "surprising" finding that patients treated at low volume hospitals have shorter length of stay after emergency surgery and may be discharged earlier than from high volume hospitals.

The research, which looked at 8120 hospital episodes across 24 public hospitals, concluded that "concentration of services to larger clinical departments may not necessarily reduce length of stay (LOS) and improve the efficiency of resource utilisation and service delivery".