Hospital admissions in Greece and Sweden : a comparative study of two communities

• This thesis reports comparative studies of admissions to regional hospitals in two communities, one in Greece and one in Sweden, during a two-year period, 1986-1987. The comparison was made using care episode diagnoses coded in the International Classification of Diseases, ICD 9. All cases hospitalised during this period were distributed by age, sex, residence and diagnoses.The results indicate that even if there were cultural and socio-economic differences between the two areas, there were also important similarities in the hospitalisation patterns. The hospitalisations seemed to be more equally distributed between the sexes and between urban and rural areas in Sweden than in Greece, where it appeared that the rural population, and women in particular, did not get hospital care according to their needs. It was also found that study of hospital admission is associated with methodological difficulties because the use of hospital services is a complex phenomenon. The thesis includes discussions about the variety of factors that can have influenced the results.

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