Hospitalizations at Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto, USP, 1996-2003

Hospitalizations represent an important share of healthcare, due to both the complexity of actions and the financial volume applied. This descriptive-exploratory investigation had the purpose to identify and describing the physical and financial production of hospitalizations performed in a school hospital in the state of São Paulo, from 1996 to 2003, focusing the specialties of surgical clinic, medical clinic, pediatrics and obstetrics. Data collection was performed by searching the official databanks of the studied institution. In that period, a global 8.5% reduction in the frequency of admittances and a 78.4% increase in the financial resources were observed. Surgical clinic, with more expensive procedures, increased its admittances; the production in obstetrics showed the lowest variation. The increasing incorporation of technology, the demands from regional users and the migration of users from the supplementary system to the SUS may justify the variation of production in the different specialties.