A comparison of hospital and critical-care activity.

Abstract

When compared with changes in hospital activity, corresponding fluctuations in critical-care activity are not clear. Therefore, trends in hospital activity were compared with those of the critical-care services and simple patient demographic details. The results suggest that while the size of hospitals remained static, hospital admissions and outpatient attendances increased by 5% each year. During the same period, the number of critical-care beds increased by 21.4%. Despite this increase in capacity, the activity of the critical-care services continued to increase by a similar 5% per annum, indicating a huge surge in critical-care workload. The results indicate that the increase in the rate of activity in hospitals and critical-care services is similar but the workload of the critical-care services is increasing much faster. This suggests that the demand for critical care may be generated from within hospitals.