The Safety of Hospital Beds

The Safety of Hospital Beds

How many hospital beds?

For many years, average bed occupancy level has been the primary measure that has guided hospital bed capacity decisions at both policy and managerial levels. Even now, the common wisdom that there is an excess of beds nationally has been based on a federal target of 85% occupancy that was developed about 25 years ago. This paper examines data from New York state and uses queueing analysis to e...

Reducing Hospital Beds

HOSPITALIZATION Section I. HOSPITAL BEDS

a. The theater evacuation policy affects the number of beds required to support the TO. A patient requiring 59 days of hospitalization also requires a bed and a medical staff for 59 days. He requires this whether the entire period is spent in the theater, or divided between 29 days in the theater and 30 days in CONUS. The most intensive and demanding medical requirements are experienced during ...

Mapping the Predicted Need for Hospital Beds

There is a long history of approaches for predicting the need for hospital beds at specific locations. Past methods have tended to regard as key variables the ser vice area population, hospital use rate per population unit, average length of stay, and occupancy rates. The usual client for a bed-need study is an individual hos pital. There is no constraint on the forecasting meth odology to ensu...