What is it about?
How size effects the average bed occupancy and costs of hospital inpatient departments. How low weighted population density adversley affects the ability of countries to have large departments. Why HRG/DRG payments to hospitals need to be adjusted for department size. Gives 2 bed calculators for maternity, critical care, paediatric, neonatal, etc to convert births or admissions into the correct number of available beds.
Featured Image
Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash
Why is it important?
If governments and hospitals do not understand the simple mathematical laws governing average bed occupancy and costs they risk cutting bed numbers, as has been done in England, and will generate operational chaos and increase the risk for patient harm.
Perspectives
Over the past 30 years I have observed flawed capacity planning in the NHS because politicians have assumed that it is grossly inefficient and therefore needs far fewer beds. If you under resource anything you will generate the appearance of 'inefficiency' and the solution is not to even further restrict the available resources.
Dr Rodney P Jones
Healthcare Analysis & Forecasting
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Capacity Planning for Small Hospitals and Departments Illustrated Using Maternity and Paediatrics Departments: Roles for Weighted Population Density, Seasonality and Size, Myths Around Length of Stay and Factors Influencing Costs and Funding, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, May 2026, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph23060711.
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