If the patient is not packed in a local hospital yet, it is likely to be in a few years. That is the conclusion of the published research letter Jama Network Open The entire project will reach the unauthorized level of the capture of hospitals nationwide by 2032.
This paper causes important questions that journalists can try to answer.
- Are local hospitals operating in unmanned capabilities? How is the patient affected?
- How did the hospital closure affect the medical approach?
- What strategies are local, state and federal policymakers to meet the demand for inpatient patients?
Historical supply and oversupply
Bed supply is not always tight. After the construction boom, the government and private payers tried to include the cost of inpatients in balloons in the 1980s by reducing the period of stay and moving to cheaper outpatients. occupancy Knock downIt leads to an integration and closed trend for decades.
Researchers at the David Geffen Medical School in UCLA, Los Angeles, have fed the federal to investigate where their current competencies are heading. dashboard Covid-19 Pandemic Data Tracking Efforts Weekly Hospital Observation Report. (As of May 1, 2024, the hospital no longer needed to report the occupancy data to the federal government, but the American Hospital Association collects. Similar data.))
Infectious diseases appear to be a tipping point where the shrinkage of the bed can be too far. Researchers have surged to 75%after the infectious diseases, and have shifted compared to about 64%for 10 years before public health emergency.
They wrote that the United States was 11 percentage points higher than the normal state of the new fangs hospital after premise blood sugar. They added that they seemed to be led by a 16% decrease in the number of employees rather than more hospitalized.
The state has the highest share of hospitals in hospitals.
- Road Island: 88%
- Massachusetts: 86%
- Washington: 86%
- Maryland: 83%
- Missouri: 83%
- New Hampshire: 82%
- Minnesota: 82%
- Texas: 80%
- North Carolina: 80%
- New York: 80%
Source: The percentage represents an average weekly indicator reported to CDC by hospitals from May 2023 to April 2024. They are rounded at the nearest total percentage.
It is a bad signal for patient safety. Road Island, Massachusetts, and Washington (see chart) have already exceeded 85%of the main thresholds, which are the maximum values that individual hospitals can handle demand from seasonal spikes or unexpected emergencies.
Pay attention Some evidence suggests Overcrowding side effects, such as drug errors and delayed treatment, are especially lower than 85% benchmarks in small and rural hospitals.
Crowd
Researchers predicted that the hospital in this country would be more crowded for the next 10 years.
If there is no change in hospitalization rate or employee bed supply, annual hospitalization will rise from 36 million to 40 million in 2035 due to aging. In this case, the national share will reach 85%by 2032 for adult beds and 3035 for adults and pediatric beds.
Research in developed countries is overwhelming and employees Increased mortality rate for inpatient patients. In some areas, overcrowding has already created the following dangerous situations. Elderly patients stay overnight in the emergency room.
Richard Leuchter, a UCLA intern and medical assistant professor, said, “If the United States wants to maintain more than 85% of national hospitals, there is a possibility of seeing hundreds of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. press release.
In the analysis, researchers have not explained factors such as the ability to change resources in the population health change or health care system that can affect the growth of the average period of stay, unexpected medical innovation or utilization.
The researchers pointed out that the use of national hospitals may not be suspended for individual states, counties, or hospitals.
A story to follow
Reporters can expose how the lack of bed -in -hospital beds affect the treatment of patients and what hospital planners and government policymakers are doing to solve the lack of the present and the future.
Many ideas are floating.
UCLA researcher Quoted measures To increase capacity: Prevent more hospitals closing Bankruptcy by improving the repayment system and regulating private equity participation in health care; Violation of the clinical burnout; Expansion of the pipeline of medical professionals; Provide innovation treatment.
at Accompanying editingThe two emergency medical doctors insisted on correcting the regulatory process that enabled the rapid expansion of hospital capacity.
There was a 1,000 bed hospital during the epidemic period. As reported They pointed out that in only 10 days, in China, the US financial system limited the development of inpatients in order to help the most painful patients.
