Bed Occupancy Rate
Percentage of available hospital beds occupied on average in a period
What is Bed Occupancy Rate?
Bed occupancy rate is the percentage of available hospital bed days that are occupied. It shows how heavily bed capacity is used.
Very high occupancy can strain services and safety, while very low occupancy may mean resources are not well used.
How this KPI is measured
- Function
- Operations & Supply Chain
- Sub-function
- Patient Flow
- Industry
- Healthcare
- Type
- Lagging
- Impact
- Operational
- Unit
- %
- Measurement frequency
- Daily / Weekly
- Formula
- (Occupied bed days / Available bed days) × 100
How to calculate it
Divide occupied bed days by available bed days, and multiply by 100.
For example, if 8,700 of 10,000 available bed days were occupied, occupancy is 87%.
Measure by ward and specialty, and note that many health systems consider very high occupancy a risk to patient flow and safety.
Where it is used
Managing capacity
Balance demand and beds.
Planning services
Decide on beds and staffing.
Improving patient flow
Reduce bottlenecks.
How to improve it
Tips and common mistakes
- Aim for a safe range, not maximum occupancy.
- Define available beds consistently.
- Use with length of stay.
More Operations & Supply Chain kpi library
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