What is it about?
This study uses a new method for comparing hospital bed numbers between countries and regions within countries. The method successfully identified too few beds in the state of Tasmania in Australia and that English CCGs all roughly access the same number of hospital beds, i.e. there is broad equity of access. When this method is applied to US states it reveals huge disparities in access to inpatient care. Persons living in Washington DC have access equivalent to the international average of developed countries while other states have lower access than the average for less developed countries! This is not the first study to point out that there is something deeply wrong with the healthcare industry in the US.
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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Why is it important?
It is vitally important to know which countries/regions have below-average access to acute care. And that an impartial method of comparison exists to reveal these disparities.
Perspectives
This is an outcome from a 30-year career investigating new methods for ensuring equitable access to inpatient care. The full series of studies can be found at http://www.hcaf.biz/2010/Publications_Full.pdf
Dr Rodney P Jones
Healthcare Analysis & Forecasting
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Would the United States Have Had Too Few Beds for Universal Emergency Care in the Event of a More Widespread Covid-19 Epidemic?, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, July 2020, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph17145210.
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