Table 2.

Study population

	Year
	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007†
In-patients (number)	11,912,797	11,205,770	11,269,412	11,978,011	12,244,671
PCCL (percentage)
0	56.45	52.25	52.75	53.64	55.16
1	0.62	0.60	0.52	0.80	1.41
2	14.73	15.07	13.83	13.40	14.35
3	16.67	17.75	17.51	17.59	17.69
4	11.52	14.33	15.40	14.56	11.39
Sex (percentage)
Male	45.40	45.33	45.65	45.95	45.96
Female	54.60	54.66	54.34	54.04	54.04
Age group (percentage)
<18	13.38	12.97	12.60	12.08	11.88
18 to 59	39.43	37.84	37.44	36.92	36.62
60 to 79	35.61	36.45	36.69	36.93	36.86
>79	19.84	21.65	22.41	23.52	24.13
Length of stay
Mean (days)	7.31	7.51	7.29	7.35	7.26
Stdev (days)	3.15	3.16	3.03	3.05	3.03

Characteristics of in-patients with a normal length of stay. PCCL is the patient clinical complexity level, a comorbidity measure used within the G-DRGs (0 = no complications or comorbidities, 4 = catastrophic complications or comorbidities). The figures published per DRG were weighted with the number of in-patients per DRG.

^†The study sample for 2007 included only 1,964,313 in-patients with information on diagnoses.