Researchers are warning the U.S. might be facing a coming hospital bed shortage amid projections of annual hospitalizations rising from 6 million in 2025 to 40 million in 10 years.
The Journal of The American Medical Association Network Open (JAMA) reported hospital admissions have remained 11 percentage points higher since the COVID-19 pandemic and an aging population and labor shortages are exacerbated by hospital closures, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
The Department of Health and Human Services began reporting weekly hospital occupancy data in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the data through 2024 covering the full Biden administration gives "unprecedented insight" into coming shortages, the researchers wrote.
"The U.S. needs greater hospital bed capacity, particularly for critical care and complex care services," the JAMA summary read. "Addressing this need has been delayed by the current reality in which bed capacity is now geographically distributed.
"Often urban or referral-center–based hospitals are overwhelmed while available beds remain at smaller or rural facilities. Unfortunately, the needs and preferences of patients as well as the specialization of care teams means that simply moving a patient from a hospital with no bed capacity to one with an available bed and staff is not always a viable option.
"Not all hospital beds are made equal, and intermittent, localized dips in occupancy should not be misinterpreted as evidence of excess capacity nationally."
Population projections between 2025 and 2035 forecast annual hospitalizations will rise from 36 million in 2025 to 40 million in 2035, which would occupy "about 85% of available staffed adult beds," according to researchers.
Reaching that "dangerous threshold" might come as soon as 2032, according to the report.
"Basic hospital operations can become dysfunctional and even unsafe" at 85% capacity, according to experts.
"Ill and injured U.S. residents should expect increasingly overloaded hospitals incapable of delivering the quality and access to affordable care to which we aspire," researchers warn.
Expanding U.S. hospital beds will prove costly both financial and for quality of care as "older and more medically complex" hospital populations will compound the coming problems, experts warn, the Post reported.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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