title: Anticipating change: how many acute care hospital beds will Manitoba regions need in 2020?
abstract: Being able to anticipate future needs for health services presents a challenge for health planners. Using existing population projections, two models are presented to estimate the demand for hospital beds in regions of Manitoba in 2020. The first, a current-use projection model, simply projects the average use for a recent 3-year period into the future. The second, a 10-year trend analysis, uses Poisson regression to project future demand. The current-use projection suggests a substantial increase in the demand for hospital beds, while the trend analysis projects a decline. The last projections are consistent with ongoing increases in rates of day surgeries and declines in lengths of stay. The current-use projections need to be considered in the context of relatively low occupancy rates in rural hospitals and previous research on appropriateness of stays in acute care hospitals. If measures are taken to ensure more appropriate use of acute care hospital beds in the future, then the current-use projections of bed shortages are not a cause for concern.
authors.affiliation: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, 727 McDermot Avenue, Suite 408, Winnipeg, MB, R3E 3P5, Canada. Greg_Finlayson@cpe.umanitoba.ca
authors.forename: Gregory S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Finlayson
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Stewart
authors.forename: Robert B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Tate
authors.forename: Leonard
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: MacWilliam
authors.forename: Noralou
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Roos
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease / Q000628:therapy*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006742:Hospital Bed Capacity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006761:Hospitals / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008350:Manitoba; D008875:Middle Aged; D020380:Needs Assessment