SOCIAL - SEPTEMBER 2024 - WHERE HAVE THE HOSPITAL BEDS GONE?

5 Does the Canadian health care system maintain too few hospital beds? The severe 4 capacity constraints observed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the persistently long 3 wait times for acute care procedures, before the pandemic and since, would seem to 2 suggest so. [...] Maintaining a hospital bed requires a commitment to training, as well as hiring and m otive inherent in the US system of private funding and provision is paying the staff needed to provide care to the patient in that bed. [...] The data, with some breaks, reports the measure from The reallocation of the health care budget away from providing hospital 1976 to 2019 (the last available data point for the US is for 2017). [...] In all three countries, beds, has exposed health systems in Canada and elsewhere to the risk of the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people has fallen steadily over this period. [...] capacity” in hospitals, or how to use hospital beds more efficiently, is an The healthcare system in the US is funded by private insurance, whereas in Canada and issue of public policy that would seem to require attention ahead of the the UK funding is provided by governments through the tax system.