The number of hospital beds occupied by patients who don’t need to be there and are waiting to receive health care elsewhere could fill 10 large hospitals, according to an annual report by the agency that monitors the performance of Ontario’s health system. It reveals that in 2015-16, an average of 3,961 Ontario hospital beds per day were occupied by patients, most of them elderly, waiting for long-term care, rehabilitation or home care. The proportion of inpatient days which hospital beds were occupied by these patients rose to 13.9 per cent that year, up from 13.7 per cent from the previous year. That equates to an increase of 25,000 in the number of days that hospital beds were occupied by patients who did not need to be there. The report shows that patients spent on average 90 minutes longer in the ER this past year before being admitted to inpatient beds.

Source: thestar October 20, 2017 00:45 UTC