EVALUATING THE USE OF HOSPITAL BED CAPACITY IN MEDICAL ORGANIZATIONS

Since recently, a number of normative legal acts aimed at increasing the salaries of medical professionals in the Russian Federation have been implemented. As these decisions are not supported by increasing the financial bases of medical organizations, those institutions may develop the accounts payable status. Under these conditions, the efficient usage of hospital beds may bring a financial relief to these medical institutions. The present study addresses the assessment of bed usage and suggests a well-rationalized set of methods to evaluate and characterize the bed usage efficiency. The main indicators of this efficiency are: the number of beds, the bed turnover, the number of hospitalized patients, the average length of hospital stay per patient per year, and the average bed occupancy per year. In this study, we analyze the available data on the hospital bed usage taken from the annual statistical information published by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. Using the method of chain substitutions we have found ways to improve the quality of medical services and reduce economic losses in medical organizations. Our results recommend implementing periodical analysis of the hospital bed usage both in general and in specialized clinics. The results also suggest mobilizing more reserves to increase the performance of hospital bed usage, mainly by increasing the bed occupancy in specialized round-the-clock hospitals. It is recommended to conduct a comparative analysis of the planned vs factual bed usage, to restructure the hospital setting with a possible change in the number of specialized beds, to optimize the routing of patients when providing primary medical care, as well as routing the patients when providing emergency service including emergency specialized medical care.

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