There is, I think, an ongoing and pervasive misunderstanding about hospital 'capacity' during COVID-19 Capacity is NOT the TOTAL NUMBER of beds It is the number of FREE beds This is a very important point
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What I mean by this is that, on any given day, 85% of the critical care beds were occupied by people - heart attacks, car crashes, urgent surgeries and the like
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Now, capacity has been increased over the course of this year, and there are many contingency plans for a flood of patients, but it's worthwhile noting that COVID-19 can push a place 'over capacity' with a 15% increase in the number of patients going to ICU
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Think about that context when you see numbers like 1000 patients in ICU in England. In a normal year, that would push hospitals over capacity across the country
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Oh, and important to add (as many have already) that a free 'bed' is not just the physical bed, but the expert staff to manage the patient and stop them from dying
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Having worked in hospital finance, it is easy to use the shorthand 'beds' when I really mean 'everything that goes into treating a patient' because we usually measure all that stuff with bed numbers
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Something further to add - the free bed capacity is not a fixed number, and usually varies over the seasons. Most hospitals operate at close to 100% capacity during winter ALREADY, which makes the COVID-19 situation in Europe even more worrying
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End of conversation
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Oh how I wish there were a better (and widely available) metric of Covid hospital impact than "available beds". It's become huge issue, as conspiracists point to available bed reports to "prove" complicity of doctors and health officials in drumming up fake sense of alarm.
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