Bed occupancy
Hospital Operations
Definition. Bed occupancy is the proportion of available hospital beds that are occupied by patients over a given period.
Explanation
It is calculated as occupied bed days divided by available bed days. Because admissions and discharges vary from day to day, a hospital running at a high average occupancy will regularly have no free bed when an emergency arrives.
Bagust, Place and Posnett (1999) showed in a simulation model that the risk of bed shortages rises sharply once average occupancy exceeds about 85 percent. High occupancy is associated with emergency department crowding, cancelled operations, outlying patients and infection, which is why occupancy targets are linked to queueing logic rather than set as close to 100 percent as possible.
Related concepts
Queueing theory Patient flow Length of stay Emergency department crowding
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References
Bagust, A., Place, M., & Posnett, J. W. (1999). Dynamics of bed use in accommodating emergency admissions: Stochastic simulation model. BMJ, 319(7203), 155–158.
Keegan, A. D. (2010). Hospital bed occupancy: More than queuing for a bed. Medical Journal of Australia, 193(5), 291–293.
Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Bed occupancy. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/bed-occupancy/
Articles that discuss this concept
2 articles on The Health Topics use this concept. The list updates as new articles are published.