Evaluation of Surgical Bed Utilization

IN RECENT years there has been a grow-ing ng concern over the proper use of hospital beds. Injudicious use adds to the sharply increasing costs of hospitalization and delays the admission of another individual in genuine need of hospital care. Certain state-insurance commissioners have begun to insist that Blue Cross plans police admission policies with the threat of refusing the plan a raise in insurance premium. The Medicare law also requires that hospitals carry out bed-utilization studies in order to qualify for the care of Medicare patients.

In Monroe County, where the University of Rochester Medical Center is located, there has been a long-standing interest in bed utilization and several studies have been carried out, both within individual hospitals and on a cooperative area-wide basis. However, in most of these studies the questions posed had greater pertinence on a medical than a surgical service. For this reason a group of