The United States could be headed for a chronic hospital bed shortage within the next 10 years, a UCLA study warned. An increase in hospital occupancy has been driven by a 16% reduction in the number of hospital beds rather than an increase in hospitalizations.
Before the pandemic, average hospital occupancy nationwide was 64%, but in the past five years, average hospital occupancy has risen to 75%. The study said occupancy levels could creep up another 10 percentage points or more by 2032. The healthcare industry considers a bed shortage to occur at 85% of general hospital beds.
A bed shortage could lead to long emergency department wait times, medication errors and other in-hospital adverse events that could cost lives. At 75% occupancy, hospitals have a little buffer against factors such as daily bed turnover, seasonal fluctuations in hospitalizations and unexpected surges.
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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates a national ICU occupancy rate of 75% typically translates to 12,000 excess deaths within two weeks. At 85%, the United States could see hundreds of thousands of excess deaths each year, said the study’s lead investigator, Dr. Richard Leuchter, assistant professor of medicine at UCLA.
The study was based on hospital occupancy metrics from the CDC between August 2020 and April 2024 combined with US Census Bureau population projections. Researchers calculated occupancy trends by dividing the number of patients by the number of beds available to find the percentage of beds that are occupied at a given time.
The country’s aging population impacted the report’s models. The study’s authors said hospital bankruptcies and closures needed to be prevented to avoid a hospital bed crisis. Revamping hospital reimbursement schemes and regulating private equity involvement in healthcare could help, the study said. In addition, addressing factors driving staffing shortages, including burnout, and expanding the pipeline of healthcare professionals are also potential fixes.
More than 400 rural hospitals were at risk of closing in 2024, according to healthcare advisory Chartis. Half of them in the United States were operating at a loss last year, the firm said. Texas was the most at risk of closures, with nearly half of its rural hospitals set to close and 18 percent at risk of immediate shutters, according to a Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR) analysis.
Rural hospitals lose money on patient services because private insurance plans pay them less than what it costs to treat patients, the CHQPR study said. They also lose money on Medicaid patients and those who do not have health insurance.
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Kristen Smithberg
Kristen Smithberg is a Colorado-based freelance writer who covers commercial real estate, insurance, benefits and retirement topics for BenefitsPRO and other industry publications.
