OBJECTIVES : The utilization of one-day surgical care has been increasing throughout the world, although Hungary initially lagged behind from OECD countries significantly regarding this indicator. In the beginning of the last decade, the Hungarian health policymakers had a remarkable initiative to significantly increase the utilization of one-day surgery in Hungary; to fulfil this strategy, several promising financing techniques were introduced. The aim of the study was to analyse the territorial distribution of one-day surgical cases in Hungary between 2009-2019.

METHODS : The study database contained all of the public-financed one-day surgical cases, the distribution of cases by Hungarian counties, as well as the type of the health care institutes between 2009-2019. The number of cases in light of the counties’ breakdown and the proportion of one-day surgical cases per 10,000 inhabitants were also evaluated between 2009-2019. The database was provided by the National Health Insurance Fund of Hungary.

RESULTS : During the analysed period, 2,530,129 cases were financed in Hungary in one-day surgical treatment. A linear increase in the number of cases could be identified between 2009-2019. The lowest annual number of cases was measured in 2009 (127,426), and the highest in 2019 (339,163). The distribution of the number of cases per 10,000 inhabitants has shown a diversified result: the highest frequency of the number of cases was in Csongrád county (354.56 cases/10,000 inhabitants), while the national mean was 243.30 cases. Four of the first ten most committed institutes in performed one-day surgery cases were university clinics (financed number of cases among universities: 451,626).

CONCLUSIONS : The number of one-day surgical cases has shown a different distribution according to territory and from institutional viewpoint as well, although those counites which have university clinical centres played significant role in one-day surgical treatment.