Descriptive statistics and bivariate analysis of clinical characteristics, study population (n=2 11 738)
| Lowest 90% low-cost older patients (n=1 90 559) | Top 10% high-cost older patients (n=21 179) | P | |
| In-hospital service use (median, IQR) | |||
| Length of stay in hospital | 2.0 [0–6) | 21.0 (13–35) | <0.001 |
| Number of total hospital contacts* | 3.0 (2–6) | 12.0 (7–21) | <0.001 |
| DRG weight | 1.25 [0.43–2.42) | 8.67 [7.13–11.39) | <0.001 |
| Most prevalent main diagnosis groups† (%) | |||
| Diseases of the circulatory organs | 61 483 (32.3%) | 9566 (45.2%) | <0.001 |
| Diseases of the respiratory organs | 34 144 (17.9%) | 8220 (38.8%) | <0.001 |
| Diseases of the digestive organs | 33 597 (17.6%) | 7756 (36.6%) | <0.001 |
| Diseases of the nervous system | 36 720 (19.3%) | 5060 (23.9%) | <0.001 |
| Diseases of the musculoskeletal system | 65 016 (34.1%) | 6664 (31.5%) | <0.001 |
| Multimorbidity/number of main diagnoses‡ (%) | <0.001 | ||
| ≤ 2 main diagnoses registered | 124 793 (65.5%) | 5137 (24.3%) | |
| ≥ 3 main diagnoses registered | 65 766 (34.5%) | 16 042 (75.7%) | |
| Mortality (%) | <0.001 | ||
| Alive by 31.12.2019 | 173 017 (90.8%) | 16 319 (77.1%) | |
| Died during 2019 | 17 542 (9.2%) | 4860 (22.9%) | |
Bivariate analysis: Mann-Whitney U or X2 test of independence.
*Includes daytime treatment, outpatient care and admittance to hospital wards in the dataset.
†Most prevalent main diagnoses found in the dataset.
‡Includes all 22 main diagnosis groups from NPR.
DRG, diagnosis-related group; NPR, Norwegian Patient Registry.