Factors influencing demand for hospital beds in English Primary Care Trusts

Up to the present, the required future number of hospital beds has been calculated under the assumption that changes in demography and length of stay are the major factors determining demand. It is recognised that a significant proportion of acute medical care could be moved into more community focussed models of care; however, there is no current method for estimating how many beds could be saved by such a move nor are there reliable methods for tracking the success of such schemes over time. The number of bed days per death is shown to respond to known factors leading to higher hospital usage such as deprivation, urban versus rural location, proportion of deaths which occur outside of hospital and the number of general practitioners (GPs) per head of population. It is suggested that this ratio forms the basis for a robust measure of the success over time An edited version of this article has been published as: Jones R (2011) Demand for hospital beds in primary care organisations. British Journal of Healthcare Management 17(8): 360-367. Please use this to cite. of various schemes for avoiding hospital admission. The validity of this ratio is best illustrated at the Torbay Health Trust which has 33% fewer bed days per death than expected, arising from many years of investment in a range of integrated acute-, primaryand social-care improvement initiatives. An edited version of this article has been published as: Jones R (2011) Demand for hospital beds in primary care organisations. British Journal of Healthcare Management 17(8): 360-367. Please use this to cite.