Length of hospital stay is due to many factors - personal, medical and cultural. Not that it is a consequence of severity not a cause and as such would not be an appropriate parameter by which to define severity. See Petrov et al Gastroenterology 2010 for determinants of severity and Dellinger et al Ann Surg 2012 for definitions of severity.
Stratifying patients into mild and severe, pancreatitis has important implications for management and clinical resource allocation. See the attached slide