Hospital Bed Shortages

Hospital Bed Shortages

Introduction

Research indicates that the demand for hospital beds is on a rise and is predicted to increase by 46% in the next decade. This puts forward the requirement for having 230,000 additional beds. This has been depicted that this sudden rise in the demand for hospital beds and all the factors related to the shortages of these beds in various hospitals is a result of the demographic shift of the population. The basic driver for this demand is the growing rate of the aging baby boomers, increased fertility rates, increased life expectancy rates and growing rate of immigrants in the United States. Demand shall grow the fastest in the states located in the Western and Southern regions. Hospitals today are faced with a challenge as bed shortage problem is on it acute height. The following paper highlights a few factors that have been established to identify the growth reasons, including the number of beds to have been few in various hospitals and the arrival and discharge of patients. This must not be forgotten that patients who stay for a comparatively longer time period in the hospital are of on the biggest problems posing the unavailability of bed problem and bed shortages mainly during Christmas and New Years are not the only issues, discharge capacity is one of the most contributing factors.

Discussion

Literature Review

Bed unavailability and increasing demand has become one of the major issues in the hospitals today. The government has put forth an accident and emergency act for focusing on the emergency health conditions and allowing admissions (Paul Walley, 2010). It can be said that the emergency departments are highly under the influence of bed availability and this affects their ability to attend to the patient in a timely manner. Here, the tool of bed management ...