Term: Heavy Users
Last Updated: 2013-10-04
These are patients who, in a given fiscal year, are in the top fifth percentile of patients hospitalized based on their total number of days of hospital care, and thus are deemed heavy users of the hospital system. The total number of days of hospital care was summed per patient and fiscal year for all their hospitalizations in fiscal years 2009/10 and 2010/11. Each patient's sum of days of hospital care was ranked from smallest to largest, and patients with 54 or more days in hospital based on one year of hospitalizations were considered heavy users for that fiscal year.