Modelling hospital and social care bed occupancy and use by elderly people in an English health district.

The paper confirms that exponential equations can be used to model the total system and sub-systems of institutional health and social care for elderly people using bed occupancy census data for 6,068 elderly aged 65 and over. Two streams of flow were present in NHS acute hospitals, Local Authority residential homes and independent sector nursing homes. Three streams of flow were present in the overall data set and in the NHS geriatric hospital beds, NHS psychiatry beds and independent sector residential care homes. In total 22% of patients/residents stayed an average of 24 days (short stay), 69% for 825 days (medium stay) and 9% for 3,384 days (long stay). In both sexes, the older a patient/resident, the longer the time they occupied short stay beds and the shorter the time they occupied long stay beds.