The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) has developed a new interactive tool that is designed to give insight into Arkansas hospitals’ bed capacity. According to ACHI officials, the bed capacity tool was developed to serve as a resource as hospitals strategize during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Hospital Occupancy Dashboard, located on ACHI’s website, shows the total occupancy and occupancy for different admission types on a day-to-day basis during the 2018 calendar year.
“A high priority of public health officials and policymakers in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic is slowing the spread of the disease so that healthcare systems are not overwhelmed,” ACHI president and CEO Dr. Joe Thompson said in a statement. “If hospitals are overwhelmed, the fatality rate could increase. ACHI has created this interactive dashboard as a tool to aid in planning efforts for the public health crisis.”
Hospitals can be grouped in multiple categories based on number of beds. There are charts for hospitals with 25 or fewer beds, 26-100 beds, 1010-150 beds, 151-300 beds, and more than 300 beds.
Clicking on a hospital grouping with show a breakdown of the bed usage in 2018, which is further broken down by admission types. The charts also have a recent hospital daily census for each group.
At the top of the data set, ACHI shows how many beds were used for elective procedures versus other procedures. According to the ACHI news release, the organization used hospital discharge datato determine the number of daily occupied beds and Clinical Classifications Software of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project to determine admission types.
READ MORE: State Officials Identify Emerging COVID-19 Hot Spots in Arkansas
