Health service capacity modelling.

This paper aims to describe a modelling tool that gives a framework for the estimation of future bed demand for hospital services. It also outlines some issues regarding the application of the model. A quantitative mathematical model was constructed that was based on two years of seasonally adjusted inpatient data. To calculate the number of beds required five years into the future, ten factors were applied to the number of bed-days used for each service. In the example given (Figure 1), 7,924 bed-days used in 1998-99 translated into a requirement for twenty-six beds in 2004. The value of this approach lies in the ability to describe and delineate each of the varying factors, and thus allowing clinicians, healthcare managers, the purchasers of health services and other stakeholders to be involved in a clear and explicit decision-making process.