The real-time secondary information support to improve bed utilization and the decision-making

ABSTRACT

It is a main way for providing more inpatients with medical service to improve the bed utilization. The main objective of this study is to collect real-time information of bed utilization per department, analyze the influences of factors on it and make rational proposal to improve bed utilization by reducing their influences. The present study included 470 beds of 10 departments of an aggregate hospital in 2014. The data of bed utilization per department and room, the accumulative length of bed stay, the annual average length of bed stay, and the average length to confirm a diagnosis and complication rate were collected and analyzed with real-time mode and were used to make rational decision. Results showed that the gastrointestinal department felt short the norm of all indicators and the accumulative length of bed stay is the most influencing factor on bed utilization and complication rate and length to confirm a diagnosis influenced to it in a lesser extent. The main conclusion of this work illustrates the real-time secondary information support system might be helpful for improvement of accumulative length of bed stay, length to confirm a diagnosis and complication rate, which can be a proposal of decision-making to improve the bed utilization.

KEYWORDS:

• Bed utilization
• real-time information support
• hospital information system
• secondary information
• decision-making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Contributors

Both the authors participated in the study design and interpreted the results. CNY participated in acquiring the data, performed the analyses. CJH wrote results and the literature review.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Health of DPRK.