Total days hospitalised between injury and final inpatient
rehabilitation discharge
Because patients may be discharged home between
phases of care, or their initial care may have been
delayed, it may not be possible to subtract the final date
of discharge from the initial admission date to determine
overall hospital length of stay. Therefore, the length of
stay should be recorded separately by adding together
the number of days spent in each hospital. This information
should be obtained by examining the admission
and discharge forms from each hospital. More detailed
information on the dates of admission and discharge
from each treatment phase and length of stay for acute
care versus rehabilitation or other types of care may
be included in a separate International SCI Data Set
module to be collected for studies focused on those
topics, but is not of sufficient routine importance to be
included in the core data set.