Factors Associated with Prolonged Observation Services Stays and the Impact of Long Stays on Patient Cost

Patients are treated using observation services (OS) when their care needs exceed standard outpatient care (i.e., clinic or emergency department) but do not qualify for admission. Medicare and other private payers seek to limit this care setting to 48 hours.Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project data from 10 states and data collected from two additional states for 2009.Bivariate analyses and hierarchical linear modeling were used to examine...