Baby length of stay in hospital
Baby length of stay refers to the number of days between giving birth and the date of discharge or transfer from the hospital where birth occurred, or death. For more information on baby length of stay in hospital, see Baby length of stay in hospital in Australia's mothers and babies.
During the pandemic, the length of time babies stayed in hospital has shortened (Handley et al. 2022). This was likely a result of concerns about exposure to COVID-19, changes in practice guidelines or women requesting an early discharge because of strict visiting rules (Semaan et al. 2022).
However, babies whose mothers had a COVID-19 infection at the time of birth were more likely to require a prolonged hospital stay compared with babies whose mothers did not have COVID-19 (Gurol-Urganci et al. 2021).
Figure 33 presents data on baby length of stay in hospital. Data exclude Western Australia (as data are not available for women discharged to home) and the Northern Territory (as data are not available for the entire trend period).
Figure 33: Proportion of babies born in hospital, by length of stay and state and territory of birth, 2015 to 2021
Line graph shows baby length of stay by state and territory of birth between 2015 and 2021.
Between 2015 and 2019, the proportion of liveborn babies who had a hospital stay of 1 day or less increased from 19.8% in 2015 to 21.6% in 2019. Modelling showed that this was an annual increase of 0.4 percentage points. The observed proportion of liveborn babies who had a hospital stay of 1 day or less was 25.8% in 2020 and 26.7% in 2021, which was higher than the predicted proportions based on the modelling (22.0% in 2020 and 22.4% in 2021). This equated to around 19,890 more babies staying in hospital for one day or less following a hospital birth than predicted in 2020 and 2021 combined.
Data for modelling exclude 'Not stated' data and therefore may not match the proportions presented in the data visualisation above. For more information on modelling the trend over time, see Methods.
Babies of mothers who lived in some geographical locations were more likely to have a hospital stay of 1 day or less. Explore the map below (Figure 34) to view data on the number and proportion of babies who had a hospital stay of 1 day or less by PHN, remoteness and SA3.
Figure 34: Proportion of babies born in hospital who had a length of stay of 1 day or less, by selected geography, 2017 to 2021
Map shows proportion of babies who had length of stay of 1 day or less by selected geographies and years.
Gurol-Urganci I, Jardine JE, Carroll F, Draycott T, Dunn G, Fremeaux A, Harris T, Hawdon J, Morris E, Muller P, Waite L, Webster K, van der Meulen J and Khalil A (2021) ‘Maternal and perinatal outcomes of pregnant women with SARS-CoV-2 infection at the time of birth in England: national cohort study’, Am J Obstet Gynecol, 225(5):522, doi:10.1016/j.ajog.2021.05.016
Handley SC, Gallagher K, Breden A, Lindgren E, Lo JY, Son M, Murosko D, Dysart K, Lorch SA, Greenspan J, Culhane JF and Burris HH (2022) ‘Birth hospital length of stay and rehospitalization during COVID-19’, Pediatrics, 149(10:498, doi:10.1542/peds.2021-053498.
Semaan A, Dey T, Kikula A, Asefa A, Delvaux T, Langlois EV, van den Akker T and Benova L (2022) ‘Separated during the first hours-postnatal care for women and newborns during the COVID-19 pandemic: A mixed-methods cross-sectional study from a global online survey of maternal and newborn healthcare providers’, PLOS Glob Public Health, 2(4):214, doi:10.1371/journal.pgph.0000214.