Lengths of stay for renal transplant

This paper analyses data from 3,444 renal transplant patients across 19 hospitals in England to understand what drives variation in length of stay. Using multi-level modelling, the study accounts for both hospital-level and patient-level factors, from demographics to institutional characteristics. The findings are potentially important for the development of local approaches to pricing of the kind the NHS is embarking on and indicate that existing data may be of limited use in guiding the setting of local prices.