Fig. 3

Time-dependent phenomena – episodes by type of admission. Note: The figure on the right aims at highlighting the Slovene inconsistency (as compared to Spain) in the coding of planned (blue line) vs. unplanned admissions (red line), as well as disproportionally large number of ‘other’ types of admission. Apparently, in 2006 all admission were coded as unplanned, and since 2007 a new category ‘other type of admission’ starts to be used. This timedependent finding might have an impact in those performance indicators that require this variable – typically, unplanned admission are excluded when assessing surgical outcomes that might be influenced by differences in acute and severe patients’ conditions