Using Interpretable Survival Analysis to Assess Hospital Length of Stay

Accurate in-hospital length of stay prediction is a vital quality metric for hospital leaders and health policy decision-makers. It assists with decision-making and informs hospital operations involving factors such as patient flow, elective cases, and human resources allocation, while also informing quality of care and risk considerations. The aim of the research reported in this paper is to use survival analysis to model General Internal Medicine (GIM) length of stay, and to use Shapley analysis to support interpretation of the resulting model. Survival analysis aims to predict the time until a specific event occurs. In our study, we predict the duration from patient admission to discharge to home, i.e., in-hospital length of stay. In addition to discussing the modeling results, we also talk about how survival analysis of hospital length of stay can be used to guide improvements in the efficiency of hospital operations and support the development of quality metrics.