Baby length of stay in hospital
Baby length of stay refers to the number of days between birth and the date of discharge or transfer from the hospital where birth occurred, or death.
A baby’s length of stay in hospital is related to the mother and baby’s condition at birth, and recovery after birth. Length of stay may be increased due to maternal or infant complications (Lemyre et al. 2018).
Between 2010 and 2023, there was a trend towards shorter stays in hospital after birth. While there has been some fluctuation between individual years, overall, there has been increases in the proportion of stays less than 1 day and 1 day, and decreases in the proportion of stays lasting 4–5 days and 6 days or more.
During this period, the most common length of stay for babies was 2–3 days. The proportion of babies who stayed in hospital for 2–3 days ranged from 42% in 2010 and 2011 to a peak of 46% in 2019, and was 44% in 2023.
Data are for liveborn babies only and exclude Western Australia.
Figure 1 presents trend data on the length of hospital stay for liveborn babies born in hospital, by selected maternal and baby characteristics, between 2010 (or earliest available year of data) and 2023. Select the ‘Current data’ button to view 2023 data.
Figure 1: Proportion of liveborn babies, by baby length of stay in hospital and selected topic
Bar chart shows baby length of stay by selected topics and a line graph shows topic trends between 2010 (or earliest available year of data) and 2023.
Many factors influence a baby’s length of stay in hospital, including birthweight and gestational age. Babies who had a low birthweight or who were born pre-term were much more likely to stay in hospital for 6 days or more (55% and 58%, respectively), compared with normal birthweight babies (3.7%) and babies born at term (3.1%).
In 2023, babies who stayed in hospital for 6 or more days were more likely to be:
- born in a private hospital (7.9%)
- born to mothers aged under 20 (9.8%) or 40 and over (9.5%)
- born to mothers who reported smoking (11%)
- born by caesarean section (9.3%)
- born to mothers from Very remote areas (12%)
- babies who had an Apgar score of less than 7 (38% for an Apgar score of 0–3 and 23% for a score of 4–6).
Many of these factors are potentially interrelated, for example, mothers aged 40 and over are more likely to give birth in private hospitals.
Some groups of babies also have a longer median length of stay in hospital, which is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Median length of stay for selected babies born in hospital and discharged home, 2023
| Group | Number of days |
|---|---|
| All babies | 2 |
| Babies of First Nations mothers | 2 |
| Babies of non-Indigenous mothers | 2 |
| Babies of first-time mothers | 3 |
| Babies of mothers who previously gave birth | 2 |
| Singleton babies | 2 |
| Babies born as part of a multiple birth | 5 |
| Babies born at term | 2 |
| Babies born pre-term | 7 |
| Normal birthweight babies | 2 |
| Low birthweight babies | 7 |
Notes:
- Includes liveborn babies born in hospital only (excludes birth centres attached to hospitals) and discharged home only.
- Excludes data where babies length of stay in hospital was 'Unknown duration' or 'Not stated'.
- For multiple births, the place of birth of the first-born baby was used for all subsequent babies.
- Data excludes WA.
Source: AIHW analysis of National Perinatal Data Collection.
For more information on:
- livebirths by length of stay and state or territory, see National Perinatal Data Collection annual update data table 3.23
- livebirths by length of stay and selected maternal and baby characteristics, see National Perinatal Data Collection annual update data visualisations table 5.7.
References
Lemyre B, Jefferies AL and O’Flaherty P (2018) ‘Facilitating discharge from hospital of the healthy term infant’, Paediatrics & Child Health, 23(8)515–522, doi:10.1093/pch/pxy127.