A study of factors related to patients’ length of stay using data mining techniques in a general hospital in southern Iran

Purpose The length of stay (LOS) in hospitals is a widely used indicator for goals such as health care management, quality control, utilizing hospital services and resources, and determining the degree of efficiency. Various methods have been used to identify the factors influencing the LOS. This study adopts a comparative approach of data mining techniques for investigating effective factors and predict the length of stay in Shahid-Mohammadi Hospital, Bandar Abbas, Iran. Methods Using a dataset consists of 526 patient records of the Shahid-Mohammadi Hospital from March 2016 to March 2017, factors affecting the LOS were ranked using information gain and correlation indices. In addition, classification models for LOS prediction were created based on nine data mining classifiers applied with and without feature selection technique. Finally, the models were compared. Results The most important factors affecting LOS are the number of para-clinical services, counseling frequency, clinical ward, the specialty and the degree of the doctor, and the cause of hospitalization. In addition, regarding to the classifiers created based on the dataset, the best accuracy (83.91%) and sensitivity (80.36%) belongs to the Logistic Regression and Naïve Bayes respectively. In addition, the best AUC (0.896) belongs to the Random Forest and Generalized Linear classifiers. Conclusion The results showed that most of the proposed models are suitable for classification of the length of stay, although the Logistic Regression might have a slightly better performance than others in term of accuracy, and this model can be used to determine the patients’ Length of Stay. In general, continuous monitoring of the factors influencing each of the performance indicators based on proper and accurate models in hospitals is important for helping management decisions.