U.S. Hospital Capacity Could Reach ‘Dangerous Threshold’ Within Less Than 10 Years

The United States could be facing a shortage of hospital beds, as occupancy continues to rise among an aging population in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hospitals are 11% fuller than they were before Covid, according to a study published Wednesday, Feb. 19, in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which adds that there’s been a reduction in the amount of available beds as well.

A national hospital occupancy of 85% “constitutes a hospital bed shortage (a conservative estimate),” the JAMA study reported, adding that “our findings show that the US could reach this dangerous threshold as soon as 2032, with some states at much higher risk than others.”

If the amount of beds aren’t increased, researchers estimate that, given the “aging population,” hospitalizations will rise from an estimated 36,174,000 in 2025 to 40,177, 000 in 2035. Counting just adult beds alone, the U.S. will hit the 85% threshold by 2032; adult and pediatric beds combined will hit the threshold by 2035.

Before Covid, hospital beds were approximately 63% occupied; since Covid, they’ve remained in the 75% range.

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Researchers used occupancy data supplied to the Department of Health and Human Services to make their estimates, and recommended increasing the “staffed hospital bed supply by 10%” and reducing “the hospitalization rate by 10%” — or some “combination of the two” to offset the “aging-associated increase in hospitalizations over the next decade.”

The JAMA report urged research into the causes of the bed shortage, with a “goal of avoiding substantial excess mortality associated with a national hospital bed shortage.” The authors cited a previous study which found that, especially for older patients, spending “the night in the [emergency department] awaiting hospital admission may have a higher risk of in-hospital mortality and morbidity.”