I have sat in on my fair share of the state of the hospital addresses given by the CEO and there always seems to be one recurrent topic, decreasing the length of stay. Our CEO always shows us the average length of stay for the hospital system, the nation, and us. They explain that as reimbursement rates will change, we will need to bring our length of stay down closer to the national average to make money. We are a non-profit institution, but even the non-profits don't want to lose money.

When I went to those meetings I would often wonder what the librarian could do about the hospital length of stay. Well the October edition of the Journal of the Medical Library Association just crossed my desk yesterday and I noticed the article, "Decreased Hospital Length of Stay Associated With Presentation of Cases at Morning Resport with Librarian Support." (J Med Libr Assoc 95(4) October 2007 381-7. Available free soon at PubMed Central)

The authors decided to study whether a librarian and a computerized literature search at case discussion in residents' morning report affected hosptial charges, length of stay, and thirty day readmission rate. They found that the length of stay for cases in the librarian attended morning report group was 3 days while it was 5 days for the control group. The median hospital charges for the morning report group were $7045 while the control group's median charges were $10,663. However the number of readmissions within 30 days was not significantly different between the two groups.

It is an interesting study and it is worth reading to determine if it might work in your hospital. It is also another way for hospital librarians to demonstrate their value to the organization that is meaningful to the suits, through saving money.