A day hospital is an outpatient facility where patients attend for assessment, treatment or rehabilitation during the day and then return home or spend the night at a different facility.[1] Day hospitals are becoming a new trend in healthcare.[2] The number of surgical procedures carried out on a same-day basis has markedly increased in EU countries and USA. New medical technologies such as less invasive surgeries and better anesthetics have made this development possible. These innovations improve patient safety and health outcomes. Shortening the length of stay in hospital reduces the cost per intervention and increases the number of procedures performed. Less hospital beds are necessary, and they are often replaced by day hospital chairs that enable admission and preparation of the patient before surgery and recovery after surgery.
The patient groups most likely to receive this sort of hospital provision are elderly people, those with psychiatric problems, and those with physical rehabilitative needs. It is also used for some cancer treatments, as at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and London's UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre.