ArticleBulletin of the World Health Organization2010
Hospital capacity planning: from measuring stocks to modelling flows.
Article in Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Competing-Risk Approach for Modeling Length of Stay in Severe Malaria Patients in South-East Asia and the Implications for Planning of Hospital Services.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2018Trial
- A Lean-based Digital Twin model for planning and governance in secondary and tertiary hospital networks.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Designing Governance Boundaries for Hospital Bed Management: Balancing Centralized Pooling and Local Protection.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Dynamic demand forecasting and capacity assessment for emergency care system: a hybrid time series and machine learning approach with evidence from Beijing.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Healthcare Service Gap Analysis: A Comparison of Trend Data from 2018 and 2022 Dubai Clinical Services Capacity Reports.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Future Hospital in Global Health Systems: The Future Hospital Within the Healthcare System.The International journal of health planning and management · 2025Review
- Revealing spatiotemporal inequalities, hotspots, and determinants in healthcare resource distribution: insights from hospital beds panel data in 2308 Chinese counties.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Do hospitals need to establish multiple hospital districts? A hospital-based perspective on the benefits of scale.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Article
- An Overview of Hospital Capacity Planning and Optimisation.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Telehealth for Nutritional Care: A Tool for Improving Patient Flow in Hospitals.Telemedicine reports · 2022Article
- Lockdown During COVID-19: The Greek Success.In vivo (Athens, Greece) · 2020Article
- Models and methods for determining the optimal number of beds in hospitals and regions: a systematic scoping review.BMC health services research · 2020Article
- Observational
- Acute hospital dementia care: results from a national audit.BMC geriatrics · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The metric of "bed numbers" is commonly used in hospital planning, but it fails to capture key aspects of how hospital services are delivered. Drawing on a study of innovative hospital projects in Europe, we argue that hospital capacity planning should not be based on beds, but rather on the ability to deliver processes. We propose using approaches that are based on manufacturing theory such as "lean thinking" that focuses on the value that different processes add for the primary customer, i.e. the patient. We argue that it is beneficial to look at the hospital, not from the perspective of beds or specialties, but rather from the path taken by the patients who are treated in them, the respective processes delivered by health professionals and the facilities appropriate to those processes. Systematized care pathways seem to offer one avenue for achieving these goals. However, they need to be underpinned by a better understanding of the flows of patients, work and goods within a hospital, the bottlenecks that occur, and translation of this understanding into new capacity planning tools.
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