A methodology for timing reviews of inpatient hospital stay.

Objective: This paper aims to describe a methodology to inform decisions about the optimal time to schedule reviews of a patient's hospital stay and to provide an example of its implementation.
Method: Length of hospital stay was assessed in 1227 consecutive inpatient admissions. Data were transformed to reflect the probability of discharge from hospital in the following 7 days.
Results: The resulting data reflected the points at which the conditional probability of being discharged were declining, revealing the potentially efficient times to conduct reviews of inpatient admissions.
Conclusions: The methodology outlined appears useful in assisting psychiatrists responsible for inpatient care to decide upon optimal times to review a patient's stay in hospital.