About The Study: The U.S. has achieved a new post-pandemic hospital occupancy steady state 11 percentage points higher than it was pre-pandemic. This persistently elevated occupancy appears to be driven by a 16% reduction in the number of staffed U.S. hospital beds rather than by a change in the number of hospitalizations. Experts in developed countries have posited that a national hospital occupancy of 85% constitutes a hospital bed shortage (a conservative estimate). The findings of the current study show that the U.S. could reach this dangerous threshold as soon as 2032, with some states at much higher risk than others.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Richard K. Leuchter, MD, email rleuchter@mednet.ucla.edu.
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(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.60645)
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