[Not Available].

Introduction: The increase in health care expenditure threatens the financial sustainability of health systems, and is leading to reforms in hospital use. The length of preoperative stay (POS) depends on the number of interventions and cancellations, but also possibly related to the care process itself (complexity, severity) and the patient (age, sex, comorbidity) with repercussions on the total stay and direct costs. There have been investigations on the length of POS in Spain and its possible relationships with these variables, hospital access (urgent or scheduled) and clinical type (originally medical or surgical).