Simple Calculation Program of a Bed Occupancy Rate using the Date of Hospitalization and Discharge

Abstract

　Since efficient bed assignment is one of the most important issues of hospital administration, various studies within this issue analyze a clinical indicator using a large size database. This study aims to develop a method of matrix representation of a daily bed occupancy to improve the quality of data analysis regardless of computerization of medical information. This matrix is known as a hospitalization matrix （HM） that can be created using only the date of hospitalization and discharge. Its number of rows and columns indicates the number of staffed beds and observational days, and its component is a non-negative integer （zero means bed vacancy and otherwise means bed occupancy）. HM can easily calculate a periodic average value of a bed occupancy rate （＝sum of corresponding columns/｛number of rows * observational days｝）. Therefore, HM can calculate various types of BOR such as a moving average, and a floor difference. Moreover, HM can create a secondary dataset for data analysis using a reusable script with a low implementation cost.