Very useful clarification re UK practice but back to the original questions.
What counts as a hospital bed in other advanced rich countries? lets say OECD members.
What level of occupancy is regarded as sensible in such countries, most of which to recognize John's point re costs spend more on health as a % of GDP than the UK?
I have always been quite interested in fever /isolation hospitals - a very important part of public health in the era of mass infectious disease and epidemics - due to come again? The sites were often used post WW1 for other things, building the Meadowell Estate in North Shields, as a very nice Youth Hostel in Rothbury Northumberland - that was the original building in Galvanized iron and I used to stay there a lot fifty years ago.
David Byrne
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From: email list for Radical Statistics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of John Whittington [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 November 2016 12:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Hospital beds
At 11:52 16/11/2016 +0000, Galbraith, Jane wrote:
>Are hospital beds physical beds or are they beds + nurses? I seem to
>remember wards being closed due to staffing shortages or cuts which
>reduced the number of beds available.
That certainly does happen, but I don't know how that is handled as far as
statistics are concerned - i.e. whether they talk about occupancy as a
percentage of physical beds or 'available' ones. I would suspect the
latter - and that is, of course, what matters operationally to those trying
to find a bed for a patient.
The opposite often happens with doctors, particularly surgeons - the
rate-limiting factor in terms of getting elective operations undertaken is
often bed (or maybe nurse) availability, rather than surgeon availability.
Kind Regards,
John
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