Understanding the contribution of general medical services to acute inpatient care in Victorian public hospitals

Background General medicine is an integral part of health services, yet there is little data highlighting their contribution to acute hospital care in Australia. Aims To utilise the Victorian Department of Health's administrative dataset for hospital admissions to evaluate the relative contribution and trends over time of general medical services to acute multiday inpatient hospital separations in the Victorian public healthcare system. Methods A retrospective time‐series study of general medical activity compared to other major specialties using hospital‐level data provided by the Department of Health: (i) extrapolation from diagnosis‐related group (DRG) activity data (2011–2021) and, (ii) directly reported discharge unit‐based activity (available from 2018). Acute multiday separations of all patients aged ≥18 years from all metropolitan and rural Victorian public hospitals were included. Results Using the DRG‐based data, general medicine ranked as the largest care provider of all specialties studied, accounting for 12.1% of separations. Despite the largest increase at a rate of 2831 separations/year (0.336%/year of total, P