Hospital Admissions in Storstrøm, 1977-1978

The purpose of the study is to describe a number of models, one of which is practically useful in recording what happened to the group of persons - especially the large number of old people who were readmitted to hospital - in the county of Storstrøm in 1977-1978 after they had been admitted to hospital (did they re- turn to their home, go to a nursing home or an old people's home, or did they die?). Maternity ward routines are also examined in the study, and it is demonstrated that a change of practice will be economically advantageous to Storstrøm (if this change turns out to have the expected effects). #Markov-models seem to be excellent tools for combining information on one sector (in this case: hospitals) with information on another or several other sectors in such a way as to give some general knowledge of the ways in which one sector influences other sectors and society as a whole. 1) Markov-models are used to de- scribe the general conditions of the population and to describe the factors thought to have produced these conditions, 2) and then they are used to measure the effects of hospitals, i.e. their contribution to the health of the population (termed their 'out- put'). The long-range result of this is that it will be possible to change the management of hospitals from being disease-oriented to being health-oriented: the moment we have a viable method for measuring the output of Danish hospitals, it will be possible for an economist to construct a new health economic theory to be used in forward planning and in debates on the health sector